J.D. Porter's Blog, page 9

Bee on the Lookout

The Great Georgia Pollinator Census

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I saw a guy in Lowe’s the other day carrying three cans of wasp spray to the checkout counter. He had a can in each hand and one under his arm. The man strode with purpose, holding the type of lethal spray that shoots out in a stream for a long-distance kill. I recognized that guy’s insect spray because I have a can at home. I have used it on the wasp nest in the ceiling of my garden shed. It is for wasps and hornets and it advertises a “20 FT jet spray”. It’s like a little fire hose. You spray it and run. That man was clearly on a mission and had a big problem if he required three cans. That’s why I noticed him.

I also noticed him because of the contrast with what I will be doing on August 21 and 22 as I attempt to get as close as possible to stinging insects. I will be participating in the second annual Great Georgia Pollinator Census and attempting to identify and count all types of pollinators—including wasps—in my backyard.

Last year I was one of about 4,500 participants who documented more than 131,000 insect sightings as part of the inaugural census coordinated by the University of Georgia Cooperative Extension Service. This year’s count may look a bit different with social distancing recommendations in place, but organizers are encouraging participants to count pollinators at home while sheltering in place.

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Here’s how it works. Census takers, like me, are asked to count pollinators on a favorite plant with abundant insect activity. We only spend fifteen minutes each of the two days, using an observation sheet with photo ID’s of the various insects we might see.

According to the pollinator census website, the project has three goals: to gather data on pollinator insect populations, to foster and preserve good pollinator habitats, and to increase the public’s knowledge and appreciation for insects. The program is modeled after the Great Backyard Bird Count, a citizen science program run by Cornell University that asks people to count the birds they see in their backyard.

When I did the census last year, I had the hardest time distinguishing bumble bees from carpenter bees. They are both large, black bees with yellow markings, but the chart does show some distinguishing characteristics. The carpenter bee has no hair on its abdomen while the bumble bee is covered with “dense yellow and black hair”. The trick is to get close enough to see if the large, black bee has a hairy butt or a smooth, shiny hiney.

The other pollinators we try to identify included honeybees, “small bees” (NOTE: there are more than 500 bee species reported in the state of Georgia), wasps, flies, butterflies and moths, and other insects. The chart I downloaded from the website asks the census taker to name the plant being observed and note the date, time, air temperature, and weather. It is so easy, even 2nd graders can do it—and last year they did.

As a media specialist in an elementary school, my wife tries to engage the students with books and activities that support their classroom curriculum. Last year, she had the 1st graders, who were studying parts of the plant, plant zinnia seeds in cups. After watching the seeds sprout in the library, they transplanted them to an outdoor garden. When they returned to school in the fall as 2nd graders their curriculum included the life cycles of animals, so her focus shifted to insects. Participation in the pollinator census using the same zinnias they planted last year seemed a natural progression.

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Two representatives were chosen from each 2nd grade class and they spent 15 minutes on the Friday of the census observing and recording. They filled in their checklist and reported—both to their classmates and to the official Georgia Pollinator Census. It was a great learning experience that will not be repeated this year since the children are not in class.

As census takers, we record a variety of animals that transfer pollen, creatures that are attracted to the colorful flowers and their sweet nectar. But bees are the champion pollinators. They gather both nectar and pollen, which sticks to them while they are visiting the flowers. They then return to the hive covered in bright yellow balls of pollen, which they feed to the larvae and other members of the colony.

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Commercial beekeepers travel the highways of America with hundreds of hives that provide pollination for crops from California to New England. Without bees pollinating our crops, our food supply would be in jeopardy. Small farmers also need pollinating bees and other insects to help them to farm profitably and feed the world’s population. However, since 2006 bee populations have been steadily declining due to colony collapse disorder, reduced habitat, lack of economic sustainability, and climate change.

But, according to Forbes magazine, the largest threat to our nation’s honeybees is the market for honey.  Prior to COVID-19, the American honey market was already declining due to imports of cheap foreign honey. Now, beekeepers are really struggling. Foreign honey impacts their cash flow, which in turn increases the risk that they will not have enough money to continue taking care of their bees.

One of the most effective ways to protect bees in America is to purchase locally produced honey. When I was director of Chehaw Park, we were pleased to partner with local beekeepers to place hives at the park. That small group of individuals has grown into the SOWEGA beekeepers club and their honey is sold at the park.

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On Friday and Saturday, August 21 and 22, I will be parked in my backyard, peering at a zinnia flower, counting bugs. The biggest challenge is that the count only lasts for fifteen minutes and it focuses on one flower. With so many butterflies, bees, and other insects flitting about the garden, the temptation will be to move to a “better” flower and to count longer than just fifteen minutes. If I see any wasps, I will dutifully count them. But if they return to the ceiling of my shed to build a nest, that can of long-distance wasp spray might have to come back out. My affinity for “pollinators” only goes so far.

For more information on the Great Georgia Pollinator Census visit the website at: https://www.ggapc.org/

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A Visit to the Zoo – part 2

The Dogcatcher Diaries

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Excerpt from: The Dogcatcher and The Fox – now available at Amazon.com and Ingram Books

Chicago’s Lincoln Park Zoo, 1920

Zoo curator Harry Fischer was large and powerfully built but moved with a gentle grace. He wore stained khaki pants over well-worn shoes and a tan shirt that indicated by its rumpled appearance that he must be a bachelor. His face was handsome in spite of his pock-marked skin and shaggy mop of sandy-brown hair.

Raven and Jo left the sea lion pool and turned north past the Landmark Café and toward the hoofed stock yards beyond.

Jo looked at the ground as they walked. She was a handsome girl, especially now that she had a bit of coloring applied to her recently washed cheeks and wore one of Raven’s old blue and white gingham dresses with the hem pinned up.

“That man was going to hit you,” Jo continued. “What would you do if he had?”

“I hadn’t thought much about it. Why?”

Jo was silent for a few steps before she replied, “I think men like that need to get what’s coming to them.”

“I would fight back, if that’s what you mean.”

Their tour took them in a wide loop, through the hoofed stock area, past the elephant and through the bear line with its polar bears, black bears, and a massive grizzly named—according to the sign—George. All the animals appeared to have what they needed, and they did not appear to be abused or neglected. Even the elephant had a large pool to wade in on hot days. When they arrived at the bird house, they sat on a bench inside to escape the brisk wind that had blown in off Lake Michigan.

Raven shared a little of her story with Jo—growing up in a small town and being the daughter of a zookeeper herself. When she was sixteen years old, her father had been hired to open a zoo for her hometown. She had been allowed to clean cages, take care of a confiscated black bear, and bottle-raise some orphan bobcats. She had a lifelong affinity for animals, but she had not been allowed to live out her dreams of working with animals. Her father had sent her away to a boarding school where she could train for a respectable job for a woman—a schoolteacher.

When Raven asked Jo for her story, the girl just told her she was an orphan who had offered to volunteer at the association in exchange for some food. Raven wanted to learn more of her background, but Harry rejoined them to continue their tour. He escorted them to the Lion House—an impressive structure with its barrel-vaulted ceiling, spacious interior public space, and clear-story windows that provided both light and ventilation. It was, Harry informed them, the vision of the zoo’s legendary director, Cyrus DeVry.

Jo pointed at a lion in one of the cages as they strolled down the hall and asked, “Who is that?”

“That’s Sheba,” he replied. “She’s alone for now, but our new director is a former circus man and he says he may have a male from a circus that is coming through town.”

“New director,” she said. “What happened to the old one?”

“Not sure,” he replied. “Politics, I suppose. The new man has plenty of ideas. I just hope he’s more than just talk. Some of our animal areas are in bad shape.”

“What animal areas?” Raven was thinking of a reason to justify her visit.

“Well,” he replied, “the bird house, for starters.”

“Why?” she asked. “What’s the problem with the bird house?”

“The cages are rusting—falling apart, really. I wish they would tear it down and give me a new building.”

His passion impressed her, but she could only reply, “Our interest is primarily with the larger animals, Harry. I don’t think I could have any influence over the condition of your birds.”

He deflated a bit, but said, “Maybe you could just give it some thought.”

As they left the Lion House, they learned that he was a city boy—born and raised on the north-side of Chicago—who had a special interest in birds but who cared deeply about the welfare of all the animals in his care. It wasn’t unusual, he told them, for him to spend the night at the zoo to nurse a sick animal or feed some newly hatched bird.

A gust of wind caught Raven’s hat and blew it across the lawn. Harry retrieved it and they all had a good laugh as he stumbled after it.

“Maybe we need to see about that coffee you promised,” Jo suggested, glancing at Raven for confirmation.

“We need to be getting back to the office,” Raven said, but seeing the disappointment register on Jo’s face, she relented. “I suppose we could spend a few minutes out of the wind.”

“This is a nice place,” Raven said as they seated themselves at a table inside near a window where the Café Brauer guarded the south entrance to the zoo. “Do you stop here every day?”

“No,” he laughed. “This place is a little grand for my means.”

“You really don’t need to do this, Harry.”

“Sure he does,” said Jo with a giggle.

Raven pulled out a cigarette and Harry was quick to strike a match. The clouds had parted, and the sun glinted off the lagoon as a pair of swans swam lazy circles. A bright red cardinal sat on the railing outside the window, lending a splash of color to the black iron fence beneath it.

“So,” he said as their coffee was served. “What did you expect to find at our zoo today?”

“Nothing,” she said. She leaned back in her seat and blew out a puff of smoke. “I can’t imagine what the complaint was about—if there was a complaint.”

“Why would you say that?”

“Let’s just say our boss might have had ulterior motives,” she replied. “He doesn’t appreciate my taking the initiative and likes to put me in my place.”

“I don’t want to agree with him,” Harry said, “but you taking-on Vinnie and his pals wasn’t such a good idea.”

“If I hadn’t stopped,” Raven bristled, “that horse would be walking around with a piece of glass in its hoof until it got infected. It would probably have ended up being put down.”

“That’s true,” said Harry, “but you could also have been hurt in the process.”

Raven didn’t respond, so he continued. “What did Vinnie mean about your picture being in the paper?”

Raven explained the incident at Rondell Boyd’s Livery Stable, how her picture came to be in the newspaper. Harry listened in rapt attention, but when she was finished, he sipped his coffee in silence. Raven eyed him for a moment, sensing his lack of approval for her actions. She felt sure it was because she was a woman. She could not help but pick at the scab.

“Are there any female zookeepers at your zoo?” She asked—already knowing the answer.

Harry laughed as though she had just delivered the punch line of a joke. He stopped himself and looked at her. “Well,” he stammered. “Zookeeping is not women’s work.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means women belong in the home, not shoveling manure for a living.”

“What about voting,” she continued, getting angrier by the minute. First Lou Hanson yells at her in the office this morning, then a bully pushes her to the ground and threatens to whip her, and now this.

“Do you believe women should have the right to vote?”

“Women should leave the game of politics to men,” he said. “It’s like playing poker, smoking cigars, or betting on the horses. It’s unseemly for a proper woman to be involved in politics—and that includes voting.” His voice was raised, and people were turning to look.

 The waiter was making his way to their table as Raven stood up and placed her napkin on her plate. She looked at Jo until she, too, stood in confusion.

“Thank you for the coffee, Mr. Fisher,” she said. “But I believe I’ve seen quite enough of your zoo.”

His mouth dropped open. He rose from his chair and watched the two women walk away.

Raven’s anger subsided with every step as she realized how rude she had been. Jo’s disapproval was evident by her downcast eyes and her silence. It had been a long and tiring day.

“He’s a nice man,” Jo said without looking directly at Raven. “Why were you so mean to him?”

Raven sensed more than just a concern for being polite. She could see how Jo had looked at the rugged zookeeper. He was much too old for the girl, but that’s what teenage crushes were all about. And it gnawed at Raven that Jo was probably right. They quick-stepped past a little stone cottage and out to Clark Street where Raven placed Jo on the LaSalle streetcar that would take her back to the office. It was a little early, not much past four o’clock, but Raven wanted respite in her apartment just a few blocks away on State Street. She thought about returning to apologize and involuntarily glanced back to see if Harry had followed. He had not, but she had the feeling someone else had. She sensed she was being watched.

A Visit to the Zoo

The Dogcatcher Diaries

Excerpt from: The Dogcatcher and The Fox – now available at Amazon.com and Ingram Books

“Whose rig is this?” Raven demanded of the men behind the two wagons outside the Lincoln Park Zoo.

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Activity stopped as four teamsters peered back at her. She held the bridle of a tall black draft horse and, as it shook its head, she was thrown off balance. The men laughed as she stumbled and steadied the hat on her head.

“This horse is lame,” she continued. “He needs attention.”

“That horse,” replied one of the men, “is none of your business.”

He leaned around the back of the wagon for a closer look at her, and she stared defiantly back. He was a weathered, muscular man who carried a burlap sack of animal feed on his shoulder. The scar running down his jaw and the whip he carried gave him an air of menace. Raven had seen plenty of bullies like him who liked to mistreat their animals. He dropped his load and strutted toward her as his face hardened. Although she couldn’t help but recoil a bit, she forced herself not to back up.

Raven and Jo had stopped off at her apartment to get Jo cleaned up before taking the streetcar to Clark and Webster and walking East toward the West Gate of the zoo. Raven did not admit it to her companion, but she wondered how she would know if animals at the zoo were being mistreated and what, if anything, she could do about it. She liked zoos and did not have a problem with the keeping of animals in cages, and the Lincoln Park Zoo was an iconic community gathering place. Most people, she assumed, thought the zoo was just fine as it was. Every time she had been there, the animals appeared comfortable and well cared for. Sea lions swam lazy laps in their pool, big cats lounged majestically on their benches, and zebras appeared to doze standing in the shade. The only complaint she could imagine was that the cages were too small. But this was downtown Chicago. Space was at a premium.

As they approached the zoo entrance, Raven had noticed some men transferring bags of what appeared to be animal feed from wagons into a small shed. The trouble began when one of the horses caught her eye. It was shifting uneasily on its left front hoof. Jo remained near the road while Raven moved in for a closer look.

 “You need to take this horse out of service,” she said to the man.

“You’re the one I seen in the newspaper,” the man snarled. He turned to his mates and continued, “This is the woman who defends niggers that come in here and take our jobs.”

As his companions moved in for a closer look, the man balled his fist as if to punch her but at the last instant opened his hand and gave her a violent shove, sending her to the ground. She immediately jumped to her feet and readied her parasol to club him. He stepped forward to meet her challenge.

“Hold on, Vinnie,” said another man. “There’s no need for that.”

“Stay out of this, Harry.”

Harry stepped between Raven and the man, holding up both hands to stop the action. He then moved quickly to the horse, turned his back to everyone, and pulled up the hoof, lodging it between his knees.

“There’s a piece of glass in here,” he said, and with a flick of his folding knife he sent the object flying across the driveway. “There,” he said. “He’s not cut. He’ll be fine.”

Vinnie stared at Raven for a moment and glanced at Harry before moving back to continue his work as if nothing had happened. Harry did not join them.

“I’m not sure that was such a good idea,” he said to Raven. “Those teamsters are some pretty tough customers.”

She was still flushed with anger as she looked closely at Harry. He wore the uniform of a zookeeper with his sleeves rolled up and his collar unbuttoned. He was handsome in a rugged sort of way, and he was clearly good with animals.

“You work at the zoo,” she said.

“I’m Harold Fischer,” he said. “Folks call me Harry. I am curator of birds, but,” he glanced at the horses, “I started out in hoofed stock.” He paused then asked, “Is it true what he said about your picture in the paper?”

 “For the most part,” Raven said evasively. “I’m here to look at the zoo, not those guys and their horses.”

“The zoo?” asked Harry in surprise.

She nodded.

He smiled, and when Raven looked down and gave a slight smile back, he said, “You can look at whatever you please. I’ll show you around—but only if you’ll let me buy you a coffee after.”

“Thank you, Mr. Fischer,” she said, “but that won’t be necessary.”

“I might like a coffee.” They both turned in surprise. Raven had not heard Josephine move up beside them.

“This is my colleague, Josephine Washington,” Raven said.

“Call me Jo.”

“Pleased to meet you, Jo,” Harry said with a polite bow. “And you are?” He turned back to Raven.

“Raven,” she said. “Raven Griffith.”

“Raven,” he repeated. “Like the bird?”

“Yes, like the bird.”

Harry had a private word with the teamsters and motioned for Raven and Jo to follow him down a wooded path and into the zoo. The change in atmosphere from the noisy, dirty street outside was remarkable. Even the air seemed cleaner. Raven had been to the zoo once or twice, but never noticed how pleasant it was. The walkways were wide, paved, and flanked by formal plantings that were now carpeted by fall leaves. Clouds hung low in the afternoon sky.

“I appreciate your doing this, Mr. Fischer,” she said.

“Call me Harry, Miss. Griffith.”

They strolled past the prairie dog village and stopped at the sea lion pool.

“I need to finish my cleaning routine,” he said. “You two are welcome to look around and I’ll catch up with you in an hour or so.”

As they watched him walk away, Jo said, “I like him.”

Raven did not reply. She wasn’t sure whether she appreciated or resented the way he had stepped in to intervene with the teamsters. She did not like the idea that she needed a man to rescue her.

Facing Down the Mob

From The Dogcatcher and The Fox: Chapter 1, Part 2

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Raven kept both hands on the implement so they would not see her shaking, and she swallowed hard, hoping to dislodge the lump in her throat. She also carefully avoided looking directly at the torch in the hands of one of the men. She unconsciously kept her pitchfork pointed in his direction as though it might ward off the flames.

“Where’s Boyd?” one of the men demanded.

“He’s not here,” she lied. “You need to move on. There are animals inside, and I’m not letting you burn them up.”

“Then get ‘em out of there,” shouted another man who rounded the corner of the building. He was squat with a square face and flaming red hair and he was followed by a dozen or so boisterous companions bearing torches, clubs, and rocks. They were laughing and jostling as though they had been drinking and they, too, came up short at the sight of a white woman in this neighborhood.

“I can’t get them out. There’s nowhere for them to go.”

“What are you protecting that job-stealing nigger for? There should be a white man running this livery.”

“Who you callin a nigger, boy?”

Raven was confused. That was Rondell’s unmistakable baritone voice, but she was practically touching the barn door and it had not opened. Her eyes swung toward the voice as Rondell emerged from the shadows at the side of the building. The entire congregation of people shifted in his direction.

He stood holding an axe handle with his feet apart, ready for action—a slender man with smooth skin that defied any attempt to guess his age. His deep voice, clever mind, and defiant disposition made her think he was pushing forty. Rondell was one of those Negroes who clearly did not like white people telling him what to do. He would probably have been lynched, had he stayed in Alabama. Now he might be lynched here in Chicago.

As she moved to head off trouble, Raven raised the pitchfork and pointed it at her opponents. The flash of a camera momentarily blinded her and gave her hope that the mob would not harm a white woman in front of a news photographer. 

The little red-headed man clenched his fists, rose up on the balls of his feet, and said, “Come on, boys. Let’s burn this place down.”

Raven gripped her pitchfork and felt Rondell move up beside her. She wanted to run away, but her feet were rooted to the spot. She was relieved to see the crowd hesitate and to hear another man speak for the first time.

“Danny,” he mumbled to his red-headed companion, “Let’s move on. We can’t win a fight with a woman. The newspaper is here, and they will eat us alive. Mr. Sweeney won’t like that.”

At the mention of Sweeney’s name, Danny’s demeanor changed. His puffed-up presence deflated like air coming out of a tire. His fierce eyes became shifty, and he glanced over his shoulder at some invisible presence.

At that moment, Raven realized that this hateful mob—these men of violence—were not here on some noble mission. They were here at the behest of others. They were puppets whose strings were being pulled. Raven could not help but worry. Who were the puppeteers and what could motivate them to foment such hatred and violence? Raven planted the pitchfork handle in the dirt and let the man approach her. She towered over him, her black hair billowing in the evening breeze.

“This ain’t over,” Danny said. He backed away from her and said louder as he glared at Rondell and moved away. “We’ll be back.”

They never came back. Boyd’s Livery stable and all the animals inside were spared, thanks to the courage of one woman—at least that’s how the newspaper reported it. The photograph of Raven Griffith holding off a mob with a pitchfork would become iconic both for the strength of one woman, and for her fierce determination to protect helpless animals. Her boss, however, would not be impressed.

Raven’s Wild Ride

Excerpt from: The Dogcatcher and The Fox – now available at Amazon.com and Ingram Books

Chapter 1, Part 1

Raven Griffith was holding on for dear life. Her horses had panicked and were pulling the wagon at a frightening pace down Forty-First Street. People jumped out of the way, giving her dirty looks when she passed them, as though she were some juvenile troublemaker out for a joy ride on a dogcart.

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“Whoa!” she shouted as she stood up and tugged on the reins with all her might.

Raven’s problem had begun as soon as she turned off State Street. The horses had cocked their heads and raised their ears when they saw the angry mob milling around on a sidewalk with torches and clubs. She sensed the animals were about to go from nervous to all-out panic, and there was nothing she could do to stop it. The backfire of a truck engine had sounded like a gunshot. That was all it took.

She had been assigned to deliver the team of horses to Rondell Boyd’s Livery Stable by her boss at the Animal Welfare Association. The animals had killed their previous owner when, in a panic just like this one, they had rounded a corner too fast and overturned their wagon. Raven wondered if she was about to suffer the same fate.

“Whoa, damn it!” The words jarred her, even as she said them. It was not her habit to curse, but the horses were not the only ones in a panic.

Pulling back on the reins seemed to have no effect, but the horses did respond to a tug left or right. She passed her destination and was fast approaching the busy Michigan Avenue intersection, where motor cars, people on foot, and street cars crossed her path. She was desperate. Instinct took over as she sat down and pulled on the left rein, steering the horses to the left side of the road. She then began what she hoped would be a gradual turn to the right—into an alley. The horses calmed as they came off the pavement and onto the quiet, dirt surface of the alley. When the wagon wheels hit the dirt, and the pulling became more difficult, they slowed even more. Raven eased off the reins and uttered a quiet, “Whoa”. When they came to a full stop, she bent forward slightly and took a few deep breaths.

“That was a nice move.”

She didn’t need to look up to see who was moving up from behind the wagon. Rondell Boyd moved slowly and ran his hand along the left-side horse’s flank, patting and talking as he moved to stand between their heads. He took each animal by the halter. They shied away from his touch, but he held on.

“You okay?” he asked.

She was out of breath, so she simply bobbed her head and allowed Rondell to take control. The horses were sweating and sucking air in deep breaths, but they calmed under his soothing voice. He led them in a wide circle that took them back toward the street.

“What set them off?” Rondell asked.

“A mob of people back at State and Forty-First,” she said. She held the reins loosely and leaned back in her seat. “I thought the riots were over. Why are white people down here?”

 “The troops stayed around for a couple of months,” Rondell said over his shoulder, “but as soon as they left, the Irish started picking at us again.”

He leaned into the horses, pushing them off the street and into the front yard of his stable. Raven dropped the reins and rose from her seat, but he stopped her. “Hold on.” He looked up toward State Street, then pulled the wagon through the barn and out the back. He directed Raven to get down and take control of the horses as he went to close the front door to the barn.

“You don’t think they’ll come down this far into the Black Belt, do you?” she asked when he returned.

“I don’t know what to think,” he replied. “I just know that with the troops gone and the police back to looking the other way, we need to be careful.”

Rondell Boyd and his wife Essie had moved north from Alabama a couple of years ago with two mules and a wagon. They had found work hauling manure out of the stockyard and sleeping under their wagon at night until they could scrape up enough to buy this barn from a Jew named Greenberg. Rondell had carefully restored the structure and, Raven knew from her experience during the riots that he would rather die than see it destroyed.

Raven had known Rondell back home in Thomasville before he abruptly left town and returned to his people in Alabama. When she learned he was in Chicago, she convinced her boss to work with him. The Association had placed numerous horses and mules into his care—some abandoned, some rescued from abusive owners—and all had thrived. He was a good man who looked after his animals, but she also knew him to be stubborn and opinionated.

“How did you get stuck with this delivery?” he asked as they each unhitched a horse and placed it in a stall.

“The Association is still looking for an officer to work with horses, so I volunteered for this,” she replied. She smiled and continued, “I thought it would be an easy ride.”

He laughed as he took the halter she handed him and hung it on a nail. She closed the gate and leaned on it to watch the horse nibble at the hay in the manger. Before he could say anything further, their attention was drawn to the loud thump of something heavy hitting the front door of the barn.

“Boyd!” a voice shouted from outside.

Raven and Rondell looked at each other. He picked up a pitchfork and made for the door.

“Wait,” she said grabbing his arm. “Let me go out there.”

“Hell no,” he replied. “I ain’t letting you fight my battles.”

She took off her cap and shook her head to let her hair fall around her shoulders. “If I go, there won’t be a battle to fight.”

He turned back to the door, ignoring her plea.

“What’s going on, here?” Rondell’s wife Essie had appeared in the barn.

“Essie,” Raven said. “There’s a mob out front and he won’t let me go out there to quiet things down. If they see him, there’ll be trouble.”

Essie looked from Raven to Rondell, weighing the options. A few minutes later, Raven stepped into the front yard of the stable to face the angry men. She deliberately closed the door and pressed her back against the barn, hoping she could keep Rondell inside.

The small crowd before her grew quiet. They were more like boys than men, not over seventeen or eighteen. They undoubtedly expected to see the Negro whose name was scrawled above the door. Instead they faced a white woman with wild black hair and slate-gray eyes—a woman in trousers holding a pitchfork.

The Dogcatcher and The Fox

After three years of writing, the pandemic finally gave me the time to finish my 2nd novel.

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Dogs are disappearing from the streets of 1920 Chicago and Raven Griffith with the Animal Welfare Association is on the case. She is a courageous woman who has reined-in a team of runaway horses, faced down a racist mob, and been kidnapped and shot. But when she assumes the seemingly trivial task of investigating those missing dogs, her adventure really begins.

As a lodger in the lavish home of eccentric widow Katherine Ruebottom, Raven gains a circle of fierce female friends, including Jo Washington, a young woman with a murky past, and Min Lee, the child of a conscripted railroad laborer from China, who is also hiding more than she tells.

To solve the mystery of the missing dogs, Raven and her posse team up with a handsome policeman and a gangster known as the Fox. But against the backdrop of murder, corruption, and racial violence, Raven’s cause seems futile. How can this young woman prevail against corrupt cops, an Irish street gang, and a sinister drug company in her pursuit of justice for the animals?                           

“The Dogcatcher and The Fox recalls the great social novels of the era, like Henry Blake Fuller’s The Cliffdwellers and the sweeping historical fiction of E. L. Doctorow’s Ragtime.”   Ian Morris

Available in Paperback and Kindle at Amazon.com.

Imprisoned by COVID-19

As my social life has ground to a halt these last couple of months, my prayer life has jumped into overdrive. I pray for my wife and her 93-year-old father who lives on his own in Kentucky. I pray for my four sons, my three brothers, and my Sunday school class. But I am praying especially hard for some friends who find themselves surrounded by the coronavirus. It is a group of men I have come to know through a Christian ministry. I have spent hours in their company singing and praying, laughing and crying. I have not been able to see these men since we began sheltering in place. In fact, I have lost all contact with them. No phone calls, no text messages, and no Zoom meetings. I worry about them because there is no social distancing where they live. These guys are incarcerated with more than a thousand men at Calhoun State Prison.

Most people I know believe that people in prison probably deserve to be there. If you are a victim of crime or simply a believer in law and order, you are probably in this camp. Even I believe that if we break the law, we need to accept the consequences. But if we take a step back, maybe there is another way to look at incarceration.

Many of us have experienced that stomach-churning feeling of driving in a car and suddenly being aware of a police car behind us with those blue lights flashing. We have broken the laws of the road, we got caught, and we will need to pay for our mistake—probably with a fine. Or perhaps we have misjudged a traffic light and blew through a yellow only to have it turn red? Remember that feeling of relief when you looked in the rear-view mirror and confirmed that no police car was chasing you. You just broke the law and got away with it.

I have certainly made my share of mistakes. They include the aforementioned traffic violations, accidents with power tools that have almost cost me some digits, and a few mistakes I don’t care to disclose. We have all made mistakes and we all feel we deserve a break—a second chance. Well, so do many of the men and women who crowd our prisons and jails. To be sure, there are evil people who deserve to be locked up and stay there. And there are some who are innocent and shouldn’t be there at all. But the majority of people in prison made a mistake, are serving their time, and will be let out some day to get on with their lives. They will be rubbing shoulders with me and my family in the grocery store, in the restaurant, and in my neighborhood. I would like to do my part to help them turn their lives around. Kairos Prison Ministry International is my vehicle for that effort. We want prisons to reform people so they can come back into society, having seen the error of their ways—to straighten out and be productive members of society. Just being locked up does not do that. Kairos does.

One of the things I like about Kairos is that it is Christ-centered but non-denominational. It cannot be claimed by Methodists, Catholics, Baptists, or AME. The men I volunteer with—my brothers—are black, white, and Latino. When we work together in Kairos, we lay our differences aside in order to focus on what is important, demonstrating that God loves all of us equally. Kairos has been called the best example of the early church in existence today.

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The program is centered around the Kairos Inside Weekend that we hold once or twice a year. The weekend consists of carefully coordinated talks, discussions, chapel meditations, and music led by a same-gender team of volunteers. The goal is to build a Christian community that encourages prayer and fellowship together on a regular basis inside the institution. These “Prayer and Share” groups meet weekly. In addition, each month the free-world Kairos community returns for a “Reunion” of the entire Kairos community which, at Calhoun, can include a few hundred men.

The whole Kairos experience is designed to build and encourage positive social character and behavior. Cynics might argue that the men are just pretending. They are, after all, “criminals” and “con-men”. But I have seen lives changed. Kairos Inside creates Christian communities inside prisons that can transform lives, decrease prison violence, and reduce recidivism.

Society spends more than $60 billion every year to keep a couple of million inmates incarcerated, whereas the Kairos program is offered at no cost to State and Federal Institutions. According to one inmate testimony, “It’s been said that it costs the government $1 million to keep me locked up, and a $250 program from Kairos set me free.”

Kairos is a ministry that consists of three programs. Kairos Inside serves incarcerated men and women living in prison. Kairos Outside reaches out to the women outside whose lives are impacted by incarceration, because families “do time” right along with their incarcerated relatives and friends. Kairos Torch encourages young men and women to share their life journey and change behavior through participation in a long-term mentoring process.

 Kairos is active in thirty-seven states and nine countries, including Australia, Canada, Costa Rica, South Africa, and the United Kingdom. It is active in Prisons all over Georgia including Valdosta, Autry, Lee, and the one in which I serve, thirty miles West of Albany at Calhoun State Prison.

The men are, I believe, selected by the prison chaplain, and approved by the warden. When we go into the prison as Kairos volunteers, we do not know what the men’s offences are—why they are there. We are not there to judge them. We are trying to live by the example of Jesus who taught us to love unconditionally. I was intimidated the first time I walked into prison and had that gate clanged shut behind me. I passed through two guard stations with double electronic doors and into a gym deep inside the facility.

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Now that I know what awaits me inside, I look forward the experience of being sequestered a gym with a couple of hundred men in prison jumpsuits because I am privileged to see God at work. I see hope, I feel love and I hear singing of hymns as joyous as I have heard in any church service. I go to serve others and find that I am the one being served. I am still baffled at how difficult it is to recruit volunteers in what we often consider the “Christian bible-belt”. We are doing work that Christ himself admonished us to do. So, why aren’t more Christian men involved?

I miss Kairos and I worry about my Christian brothers, both the volunteers I serve with and the men on the inside. I am not allowed to name them here, but I see their faces. I wish I could tell them I am praying for their wellbeing. I also worry about the Kairos program. We rely on close contact—handshakes and hugs—to convey our friendship with one another.  I wonder what our program will look like when we do return.

Whenever I begin to feel bad about my social isolation, I remember those who have it worse. People are suffering through illness, job loss, business failure, and even death. I also remember my Christian Brothers who are packed into confinement, alone and helpless against a terrible disease from which there is no escape.

In the months that lead up to our weekend inside, we volunteers spend hours planning for the event. The obstacles to our success include finding enough volunteers for the weekend, securing funding for meals and materials, and the logistics of getting everything, from food to musical instruments, through security. We meet regularly, we plan diligently, and we worry a lot. That is what I am doing right now as I think about the Kairos Prison Ministry—worrying. But one thing I have come to appreciate, because I have witnessed it time after time. Somehow, when God is involved, it will all work out. And it always turns out better than I expected. Maybe that is the overarching message for our time.

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Earth Day at Fifty

I don’t know about you, but the last thing I need right now is more bad news. So, as we celebrate the 50th anniversary of Earth Day while we endure a global pandemic, let’s not look at the perils we are in because of climate change. Let’s find something to celebrate. I have found hope as I look back on my fifty-year career working with animals—hope that maybe things are not as grim as they appear to be.

Last year, I wrote a little book called The View from a Wagon: Five Lessons for Living Life in the Slow Lane. It was intended to be positive and hopeful. Now, with plenty of time on my hands, I am writing a follow-up book with the working title, Lessons from the Zoo: Ten Animals that Changed My Life.

In it, I explain how I learned to trust from working around elephants and how not to be too trusting after dangerous encounters with big cats. I reflect on the animals that taught me to face my fears (reptiles), to appreciate life (dogs), and to apply the golden rule in everything I do (apes). I have learned from the animals, and I have witnessed dramatic and positive changes in the way we interact with them.

When I was a young zookeeper at Busch Gardens nearly fifty years ago, the black rhinos frightened me. They were flighty, unpredictable, and always took an aggressive approach to any situation. It was charge first and ask questions later—three-thousand pounds of meanness and aggression. Any veterinary procedures required a tranquilizer dart, and it seemed to me that even then, things never seemed to go well.

[image error]When we received two black rhinos at Chehaw Wild Animal Park in 2006, I expected we might be in for some rough times. Dubya and Sam Houston were a couple of adult males that came from a breeding ranch in Texas and were semi wild. The first time we locked one of them in our squeeze chute, he went crazy, banging the bars so hard we thought he would either kill himself or break out of the cage and kill us.

But animal care professionals had learned much about animal behavior in the last few decades. When I was deputy director at the Toledo Zoo in the 1990s, for example, we brought in trainers to help us work with the animals in our collection. These were the people who had learned to train killer whales and parrots. They were confident that their use of something called operant conditioning—using food rewards to elicit a behavior—would work with other species. They were spectacularly successful, and the animal business was transformed. The keepers at Chehaw decided to try operant conditioning on our new rhinos.

[image error]After several tedious months of convincing the rhinos that we meant them no harm, they learned to do just about anything for a piece of sweet potato. They would place their noses on the outstretched hand of a keeper when commanded to “target.” They stood calmly while staff rubbed them or checked inside their ears. They tolerated groups of rowdy schoolchildren entering their night house. And, most remarkably, I watched a rhino stand still enough to allow a veterinarian to stick a needle into an ankle to draw a blood sample while it calmly took another piece of sweet potato from its keeper.

Thanks to some patience and many hours of training and building trust, these animals went from frightened and insecure, to comfortable and docile. Their quality of life improved immensely as they settled into a life of routine activities punctuated by enough changes to make life interesting. The zoo business has evolved during my career and it excites me to imagine how it might change in the next forty or fifty years. Come to think of it, the world as we know it is likely to change, too.

Richard Louv, in his new book Our Wild Calling, interviewed one provocative eco-theologian who suggests that the world is a multi-species community of which humans are just a part. But we humans but refuse to join the club. Is it because of some divine spark—our belief in God—that we have chosen to separate ourselves from the rest of God’s creation? I wonder if that is what God intended.

We may feel that we are separate and alone as a species—above the fray, as it were—but at the end of the day, COVID-19 has proven that we are not so special. What will it take for us to give up our exalted and delusional position as rulers of the earth and recognize that we must become part of the earth in partnership with plants and animals?

If we have learned anything from the viral pandemic, it is something we have heard over and over, “We are all in this together”. The virus shows that we are not in control, because the natural world—of which viruses are a part—affects all of us equally, whether we are white, black, Latino; Christian, Jew, Muslim; American, Italian, Chinese. Global climate change may not be as dramatic as a virus that has the entire world hiding in our homes, but it does affect all of us just the same.

When Dubya and Sam Houston arrived at Chehaw, they were adult rhinos and, by some measures, too old to learn “new tricks”. But the rhinos taught me that we are never too old to learn. I earned a master’s degree from the University of Georgia at the age of 60, I self-published a novel at 63, learned to drive a mule wagon and wrote a book about it at 66, and now, at the age of 70 I am learning a new world-order. As the celebrated Spanish author Miguel de Cervantes wrote in the early 1600s in his classic work Don Quixote: “It’s good to live and learn”.

This is a marvelous and complex earth on which we live. I have a feeling we are all going to be learning more about the natural world—and about ourselves—as we begin to venture back into it. On this the fiftieth anniversary of Earth Day, I can’t say I am looking forward to what awaits, but the more I learn, the less intimidated I am at the prospect. I think I’ll go out and do something good for the earth today. How about you?

Wrens in the Driveway

[image error]What is it about wrens? While most birds are content to nest in the trees and shrubs around my house, the wrens seem to want to nest inside my house—or, at least, in my garage. The minute I open my garage door in the morning, they begin to flit in and out looking for that perfect spot among the boxes, bins, and baskets. My garage door stands open most of the day since my wife and I are home sheltering-in-place from the virus. The wrens are our only outside visitors and they keep pretty busy.

On Wednesday, March 18th, my wife removed a pile of leaves and sticks from an old dishpan on a shelf in the garage. We immediately suspected the wrens because they were still flying in and out of the garage every time we opened the door. In the wild, wrens are known to pile twigs, pine straw, and leaves into the nest cavities they choose. This provides a platform on which to build a soft-lined cup. The cup itself is built into a depression in the twigs and lined with soft materials like feathers, grasses and animal hair. Once the nest is complete, the female will lay from 3 to 10, white or gray eggs which they will incubate for up to two weeks.

[image error]A couple of days after we removed the debris that might have become a nest, I observed them carrying pine straw and leaves into an old coat rack next to the garage door. The coat rack held several extension cords that were coiled on its hooks and apparently made a great platform for a nest. What’s better, two of my yard hats—an expensive Tilley hat topped by an old bucket hat—provided a roof. It took two days of steady work for them to build a fine-looking nest. I was willing to give up the use of my extension cords and hats, but a bigger problem was apparent. The nest was inside my garage and I wasn’t willing to leave it open for the duration. So, I moved the coat rack a few feet and set it outside the garage. That’s the last I saw of the wrens.

My wife and I have long been bird watchers. We enjoy observing them, identifying them, and attracting them to our back yard. We also enjoy the exotic birds when we travel. Our bookshelves at home include volumes on the birds of Belize, Costa Rica, Canada, East Africa, and Britain and Europe. My wife is an artist and, after our trip to Belize a few years ago, she documented our experience by doing a large painting that hangs in our bedroom. It represents a lush, tropical landscape with a Mayan ruin in the distance. But the painting features birds—collared aracari, blue-crowned motmot, violaceous trogon, great kiskadee, and ferruginous pigmy owl.

During my own travels, I have searched for the elusive resplendent quetzal in the cloud forests of Costa Rica, marveled at the primitive hoatzin on a tributary of the Amazon river, and gingerly stepped over nesting blue-footed boobies in the Galapagos islands. But I receive at least as much pleasure observing the birds in my Southwest Georgia yard. In just the past week, I had to stop working in the back yard to watch a pair of Rufous-sided towhees scratching around in the leaf-litter. Later, I peered out my front door at the bluebirds catching insects on the front lawn.

[image error]One afternoon, my wife called me to the back porch to see a flock of a dozen or so cedar waxwings that had piled one on top of one another into our concrete birdbath. That birdbath is frequently used for, of all things, bathing by mockingbirds, mourning doves, and others. It is also the source of bird fights. We recently watched a female cardinal chase two blue jays out of it and then saw a tiny bluebird chase away that female cardinal.

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On a recent Thursday evening when we were eating dinner on the back porch. As the evening sun was setting behind me, I saw a distinctive shadow flitting across the brick wall of the house. It was our first ruby-throated hummingbird of the season. He was looking for the feeder that hung there last year. How in the world did he find that spot outside my kitchen window from wherever he had spent the winter? That evening, I prepared the simple syrup we keep in the feeder all summer and we have enjoyed the hummers ever since.

And our bird watching continues into the night with the serenade of barred owls hooting back and forth sounding like they are asking, “Who cooks for you?”

It took me a lifetime of travel to appreciate the fact that the birds that fly in and out of my backyard are as wild and exotic as any I have seen around the world. Birds represent the freedom we all yearn for, and they inspire in me an appreciation of nature. And then there are the contrary little wrens.

After seven days of watching the nest, I had decided the wrens had been abandoned it. But on Tuesday, March 31st, as I approached the coat rack in my driveway to move it back inside the garage, a wren flew out. She soon came back, and she has been sitting tight since then. A male wren has been delivering bugs to feed her.

Wrens, according to the Cornell University Bird Lab, prefer nest sites in open woodland. They tend to avoid heavily wooded areas where it’s hard to see predators coming. They will nest in old woodpecker holes, natural crevices, and nest boxes provided by humans. If they can’t find any of those spots, they will improvise. In my case, they liked an old coat rack at the edge of a South Georgia driveway.

[image error]My Peterson Field Guide describes wrens as “small energetic brown birds; stumpy, with slender, slightly decurved bills; tails often cocked”. That cocked, upturned tail looks to me like a one-fingered salute—the sign of a haughty, “I’ll nest where I please” personality. They would nest on my living room bookshelf if I would leave the front door open. Wrens are persistent, resilient, and hopeful—just like I am trying to be. I should also be more like the bluebird of happiness that is catching bugs on my front lawn, but I am not quite there yet.

A New Look at Old Routines

I am looking forward to Easter this year. Sunday, April 12th, 2020, is one of the most important days on this year’s Christian calendar and I will be there—at least in spirit. For my entire life, the Easter routine has been to get dressed up and go to church. That routine will not change this year, even in a time of social distancing. Well, the get dressed up part will change because I won’t be in church physically. The rituals that I enjoy inside my church will change because I can’t actually be there. But I am practicing physical distancing, not social distancing, so I can participate in my church service online and have some serious social closeness.

[image error]On Sunday morning at 10:30, I will turn on my television, listen to the music, participate in the prayers, and hear a message of encouragement from my pastor. A sidebar on our media feed will tell me who else is participating. We have over two hundred people on a typical Sunday. I wonder how many we will “see” on Easter as I keep my routine of attending church, but not the ritual of a normal service.

During this time of enforced isolation, I have come to appreciate that I have two support patterns that help to structure my life—routine and ritual—and they are not the same. My routines are those habits that give form to my day. I eat breakfast, brush my teeth, and go for a walk. My routines have become more important as I have gotten older. I organize my days well in advance in a notebook I keep by my chair. My wife keeps her list of things to do in the kitchen.

A ritual is different. It is more ceremonial and often connected to an organization. When we participate in a ritual, like going to a place of worship on a particular day, we make a commitment to join other people in a rite of passage. Whether it is a wedding, a birthday celebration, or a graduation, all demand particular behaviors and even socially acceptable clothing. Easter, for example, is typically a time for extravagant attire—our Sunday best.

Rituals can be ancient and mysterious. They can even be considered sinister. We Freemasons have been practicing our rituals for hundreds of years. I have always found great comfort when the lodge door was closed, and the Tyler was seated outside, even when the only purpose of the meeting was to practice our rituals. But that secrecy surrounding Masonic rituals has also given rise to conspiracy theories—even though Masonic fraternities contribute millions of dollars every year and support such open and appreciated charities as the free hospitals of the Scottish Rite and the Shriners.

We can’t control rituals or change them. They are usually set for us. That is what makes them rituals. They connect us to an organization, to our community, and sometimes to society in general. Rituals are what we have lost for the time being. But we can still have routines to reinforce a sense of control over our every-day lives.

Before I went into my self-imposed isolation, my life was ruled by routine. I was up at 5:30 every morning to read the newspaper and write. I walked in the mornings, went to the gym at 2:00, and ate dinner at 6:00 in front of the local news. Monday through Saturday, I alternated between a three-mile walk and a trip to the gym. I did yoga exercises twice a day and looked forward to my wife coming home from work at around 4:00. Sundays were set aside for church, followed by lunch at a restaurant.

[image error]Now, most of that is out the window. My routines have changed. I still take my morning walks and do yoga exercises in the bedroom, but my wife no longer comes home at 4:00—because she is already here. My gym is closed, as is my church and all the restaurants we once visited for Sunday lunch. Once a week, we venture out to the grocery store or drug store, careful to utilize the face masks she made for us. But otherwise my days, like the days of most everyone else, are filled with… well, monotony.

[image error]My isolation shelters me from the world’s troubles but, somehow, I sense the anguish of job loss and illness. I recently experienced the death of a close friend. There is no way to sugar coat what is going on. But I see hope in these sad times. I see families riding bikes together, I see couples walking dogs, I see children playing croquet on the front lawn. People are sitting on porches and patios just talking. During one morning walk, I noticed two neighbor ladies walking together. They were far in the distance, heading my way, and something struck me as odd. It took me a while to figure out what it was. One lady was walking along the curb while the other was in the middle of the street—about six feet away. They were not in the same family unit and were honoring each other’s social distance.

On that same walk, I saw another unusual sight. A woman was running toward me pushing a stroller—one of those big, three-wheeled jogging strollers. As I caught her eye to nod hello, something was a little off. She was in good shape, but a seemed little old to be pushing babies around in a stroller. I glanced into the stroller, expecting to see a grandchild. Image my surprise at having my gaze met by a dog. It was a big dog—maybe a yellow lab—and he looked pretty content lying there bouncing along in a baby carriage. He was a little gray around the muzzle and looked to be at the age when running alongside his companion might have been difficult, but she had figured out a way to include him, anyway.

When necessary, we invent new routines to give us comfort and some sense of control. And we even give a nod to some of our rituals. Our church, for example, has asked us to post a photo or a brief video of what we will be wearing to church on Easter Sunday. Not the all-dressed-up, Sunday-best outfits we would wear if we were going to the church building. We are to show what we will be wearing as we watch from our homes. For me, it has been an old t-shirt, some shorts, and my comfy bedroom slippers. For this Easter, I might shave and put on a clean t-shirt.

[image error]At the end of one of our first days in isolation, I suggested to my wife that we take a walk every evening after dinner. She not only agreed, she decided to document the walk by posting a photo on social media of our feet in a different pose each night and one photo of something interesting or beautiful that we had seen. She has done this every night. It is now a touchstone of our time together. A new ritual that keeps us sane in these insane times.