Silence Stimulates

I live in a very rural area, that experiences minimal traffic noise or other urban disturbances. In fact, many friends consider it to be the far-out boonies. I need the tranquility. Over the last few decades researchers have documented many ill effects that society's noise has on people. Epidemiologists have shown a high correlation between noise and high blood pressure, heart disease, sleep loss, and immune system damage. Five years ago the UN's World Health Organization found that some 340 million Europeans (a bit more than the population of the US) annually lose over a million years of healthy life, due to noise. That's one hell of a toll!

Noise pollution has been recognized for a couple of generations as having a deleterious impact on human health and well being. As a person who built a career on studying the mechanics of noise reduction, I'm not at all surprised at the negative impact of noise on people. It's what my career was all about! It's also a major reason why I took leave of the urban life three decades ago and sought refuge and a healthier (and quieter) life in the woods of Appalachia.

I sought solace in the quiet I found out here. I avoid noisy machines—rototillers, tractors, and other small engine devices—in favor of doing as much by hand as possible. It is not only cheaper and more peaceful, but gives my body the exercise that it needs.

I have written before on this blog about my desire for tranquility and solitude. In quiet moments I seek calmness, I tune into inner thoughts, I can even come to sense the oneness of existence. I have found quiet to be soothing and healing—especially knowing that noise is unhealthy. The root of the word noise is the Latin word nausea, meaning “seasickness.” (The Latin word naus means “ship.”)

But that reasoning suggests that quiet (or silence) is primarily an escape from something. It's replacing a “thing” with “no thing.” Quiet, in this sense, is just an absence of noise; silence is just the lack of sound. Is silence really just a negative entity?

The key here is what's going on in the brain—our ultimate sensory response either to noise or quietness. The science of brain scans has exploded in recent years and is providing lots of evidence of what's going on in the brain, as it responds to various sensory inputs. Some recent research is showing that activity in the brain is stimulated by silence, just as much as when we hear sounds. A certain network of neurons lights up when sounds are heard, but quite a different set of neurons fires when quiet ensues. So the brain is just as active when quiet prevails. To the brain, silence is not a negative entity. Mental work is happening then too.

These recent findings fuel my need for quiet even more. Where silence once represented an escape from a clamorous world for me, I have come to see that it's not an escape from, but a coming to something: a state wherein my brain stays engaged—but no longer in an unpleasant way. It's now active in an agreeable and even creative way. In fact, it's doing the healthy work of silence. As Paul Simon wrote over 50 years ago,

              And the vision that was planted in my brain

             Still remains

             Within the sound of silence.

Spring Beauties

I have posted photos of these wildflowers before, but I can't help myself from doing it again. Of all the cultivated flowers I have coddled over the years, wild spring beauties seem to outdo them all. These little blossoms (about one-half inch or one centimeter wide) shine forth in all their glory for two months. And if I care for them, they will return next spring and bless me for many more weeks. What can one ask for more, in a flower? (Click to enlarge.)

Our Haitian Obligation

I recently discovered a fascinating historical tidbit, from one of my online courses: the US owes a great debt to Haiti, for what its people did to stand up to Napoleon's superior forces in 1803. Here's how it came about.

After the USA won its war of independence from Britain (some 20 years earlier), the Americans were no longer confined to the East Coast. They began to expand westward across the Appalachian Mountains, into Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee. Rich farmland awaited them in these new territories. Their challenge was to get their agricultural products back to the newly independent states along the coast. The mountains were too formidable a barrier to carry all that produce over them and there were no roads. The solution was to float the goods down the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers to New Orleans, load it on ships and sail back up the coast to the original 13 states. This route depended on the agreeableness of Spain, who controlled New Orleans at the time. Spain was agreeable. The US prospered.

Another, much greater barrier than the Appalachians, however, loomed in the mind of Napoleon Bonaparte, who was feeling his military oats in Europe at the time. He was smarting from the revolt of Haitian slaves, who in the 1790s had booted out the French and had been governing themselves quite well, thank you. Haiti and the other Caribbean islands were very prosperous at the time, from their sugar plantations, and Europe's sweet tooth wanted more. Besides losing Haiti, the French had lost most all of its territory in North America to England several decades earlier.

Napoleon was determined to reassert France's presence in the Americas. His plan: send a large armada across the Atlantic, recapture Haiti, occupy New Orleans, and reap the economic benefits of a French empire in the New World. Haiti and New Orleans were doomed. How could the backward Haitians manage to fend off a far larger, better-equipped French invading army? And as for the Americans, what would happen if New Orleans fell into French hands? The impact was obvious to them: American agricultural goods from the new farmlands west of the Appalachian Mountains would never get back to the original 13 states. They'd be bottled up between the mountains and a hostile French New Orleans and Louisiana Territory. The US expansion westward would slow to a trickle and America's future grandness would likely never be realized. It was a glum outlook for the fledgling American states.

The fierce Haitians met the French landing forces of tens of thousands of troops. Outgunned and out numbered, the former slaves were fighting for their very survival. Furthermore, they were enraged by a deceitful trick Napoleon had played on them, a couple of years earlier, when he feigned negotiations with their brilliant revolutionary leader, Toussaint L'Overture. Instead, Napoleon captured the former slave hero, took him back to France, and killed him. Napoleon's karma for that evil deed was to watch the former slaves of Haiti trounce his army and send send them limping back to France. The ferocity of the Haitians was aided by an epidemic of yellow fever that helped to decimate the French army.

Hooray for Haiti! But the consequences of the French humiliation were even greater for the budding United States. Defeated, Napoleon never attempted to capture New Orleans. America's westward expansion exploded. In another couple of years Thomas Jefferson would purchase New Orleans and all of the Louisiana Territory west of the Mississippi River from France for a bargain. So how is it that France came to acquire Louisiana from Spain, in the meantime? Spain, hurting for cash and seeing its American empire begin to crumble, had sold the territory to France, who then sold it to Jefferson, when Napoleon's subsequent martial adventures stalled in Europe and Russia, and he needed the cash.

So there you have it: our American debt to the former slaves of Haiti. While we Americans headed west and became evermore powerful, Haiti was later doomed to fall back under French influence, when (in order to acquire French recognition of Haitian independence) Haiti was saddled with a monetary debt that required over half a century to repay. Ironically, rather than acknowledge our “freedom-to-expand” debt to Haiti, the US played a significant role in the subsequent exploitation of that Caribbean island. In 1915 US marines landed in Haiti to protect American business interests there. It was just one more example of US interference in the Americas. Our debt to the Haitian people remains unpaid. 

Bullying Carpenter Bees—Part 2

So I've decided that these guys are real insects. But what are they up to? Are they really threatening? Am I in danger of getting a painful sting? Once, long ago, a bumble bee stung me; it's not an experience I'd ever wish to repeat. So what's going on? What has changed, to bring these pesky little buzzers around, these last few years? Does their intrusive presence indicate a future “Planet of the Bees” horrible scenario? And what's their bullying got to do with me? I'm just doing my thing around the homestead—quiet and peaceful like. Go bother someone else—someone who is causing trouble!

Needing to comprehend this bee bullying, I once again turned to the internet for help. On a University of Kentucky website I learned that the carpenter bee I'm seeing is the male. They are very aggressive, as they protect the nest that their mate has prepared and populated with eggs. Said nest is a hole drilled into wood by mom, into which she deposits half a dozen eggs—each one tucked up against a ball of pollen (the only source of food for these bees). In a week or so, the larva will emerge, dine on its private pollen ball, and begin its seven-week-long life—maybe pestering another innocent human by buzzing around them?

The fascinating fact about these critters is that the aggressive male—that guy who's bullying me—is stingerless! Talk about chutzpah! He's in my face and faking it. He's relying on his substantial size and his threatening buzz to intimidate me... and it's worked! But now, armed with my newly-acquired knowledge, you better watch out, buster; the next time you dive bomb me, I'll get right back in your face and maybe even whap you around a bit. I'm wise to you now.

So I'll go about my business, no longer intimidated by the bullying carpenter bees—although it's difficult to overcome that startled reaction that evolution has built into us, to a big bee's buzzing. It's like the innate aversion we have when we spot a snake. Even after I have learned to appreciate our local snakes' predation of voles, mice, and other bothersome rodents, I still get a flutter of my heart when I spot a serpent—especially if it's only a few feet away.

I think my biggest (and legitimate) concern about carpenter bees is the holes that mama bee drills in our numerous wooden support structures. The internet told me that she can bore holes a foot or two deep in wood. (Good lord! That's equivalent to me tunneling some 150 feet!) Good thing I'm known for overbuilding my structures—I always fashion beams and rafters at least twice the size they need be. Maybe I'll require that extra safety margin, as I now realize that the buzzing carpenter bee is harmless to my hide, but not to wood.

Bullying Carpenter Bees—Part 1

The last couple of years have seen a passel of carpenter bees flying about and hovering in the air around our clearing in the woods. They zoom into your face, getting up close and personal—seemingly challenging your right to be there. They're big (at least an inch long) and they're noisy. Their buzz commands your attention and is rather unnerving, as you warily turn towards them, wondering if you are under attack. They intimidate people and seem to know it.

A carpenter bee is the size of a big ol' bumblebee. Where the latter is striped black and yellow with a hairy body, the carpenter bee's abdomen is black and shiny. Out of the corner of your eye one will be challenging you, looking like a miniature Darth Vader in his insidious space craft. It's distracting, at the least.

Carpenter bees were rather uncommon around here several years ago. I'd see one only occasionally, as it plunged into a perfectly round hole that it had drilled in wood; or emerging from said hole, to fly off, quickly out of sight. But in the last couple of years we have seen lots of them, in all parts of our clearing. Has global warming increased their numbers, as well as their swagger? Have we added a large enough number of wooden structures around the homestead, that the word is spreading around the carpenter bee world, about all the choice nesting sites here?

Whatever is happening, they have certainly become common, as they hover nearby, acting like miniature drones who are surveilling us. Several days ago—sort of in a paranoid mood—I found myself wondering if they actually could be tiny CIA drones. The government is more and more into monitoring us innocent citizens. (I know, I know; I have nothing to worry about, if I'm innocent... but what does innocent mean these days?) Cities have CCTV surveillance (they call them “security”) cameras perched everywhere, catching all sorts of nefarious activities. Maybe carpenter bee drones have been invented to keep an eye on us country folks?

I quickly shook off my paranoia, realizing that the bees' incredible flight acrobatics I am watching are well beyond the skills of the current generation of CIA drones. (Although they're improving on them all the time... maybe next year? Oops, there goes my paranoia again.)

The bees pestering us suddenly appear, hover for a moment, and then dart off at warp speed—instantly circling the garden shed and reappearing behind you, menacingly buzzing, three feet away. They are not just buzzing us; at times two of them will face off, spin around each other in a kind of bee aerial combat, and then scream off—one chasing the other. So these are real bees, not secret spies built by the CIA.

More on carpenter bees next time...

Carpenter Bee on Blossom

Click to enlarge.