We have a friend who keeps laying hens for the eggs. Every week or so a dozen eggs show up in our living room or on our kitchen table. The yolks are large and so yellow. She lets them range freely and lets the eggs get fertilized because she feels they have more “life force” that way. She also tosses kitchen scraps and the hens eat it all. We visited her coop one day. It is amazing how patterned chickens are. Every night they return to their roost and do their thing. During the day they run free.
I don’t know why but these chickens are on my mind. This was the last week of my semester and I’ve been considering either quitting or going half-time, so I have more time for my other pursuits. How strange is it that after only five years with a “real” job I am suddenly worried about things like benefits and steady paychecks and health care. Most of my adult life I’ve worked as an independent doing all kinds of things. Together Milt and I have created over 100 unusual items like radio programs, films, Bead People International, a dozen novels and books, and, and, and. Having the time for those creations was essential. Now, suddenly, I’m a bit nervous about “free range” again. The other night I wondered what would happen to caged chickens if you suddenly dumped them out in the long grass. Would they recognize bugs? Would they know their predators? Would they be able to sustain life?
Then I started thinking of children caught in the cage of NCLB being forced learning as if was feed. No play, no roaming, no creation? It suddenly occurred to me that we are creating cage syndrome in our kids at a time when creative and innovative thinking are absolutely essential to the survival of the human race.
Milt and I were joking around the other night about The Little Red Hen. If you remember, that little lady wanted to bake a loaf of fresh bread. She wanted to enlist the help of her buddies who all wanted to share the bread-but when she asked could they help with this or that, they all said, “Not I”. We were putting this story to modern times and realized that now if Ms. Hen wanted to bake a fresh loaf she’d have to call a committee together, design outcomes, determine resources, measure progress, report the progress, form a task force and then, because she ran out of time, forget about the bread.
I think this is actually about four posts in one. I should have stuck with the chickens.
One of the things Milt and I continue to observe is the difference between the energy of creating and the energy of “problem solving”. One is filled with lightness and electricity, one is a deadening, flat energy that brings you down.
Oh dear, another post. Maybe now that my semester break has begun, I will actually tame my teaming brain (it’s been caged since August) and get it working in a more orderly fashion.
Apologies.
Jamie