Family Day in a Zoo (Article in Progress)

Dr Abe V Rotor 

 

Missing Link of the Phylogenetic Tree.

Once in a while, go somewhere far away.  Feel free.

Fill up the missing link of the Phylogenetic Tree.~

Dr Abe V Rotor 

Trixia rides a minibike her guests applause at her game,

And think she is like human sane. 

Would she in her forest home be awed and praised the same?

Ask not what it means to be sane.

Light moments at the Avilon Zoo, Rizal

Mimicking is simpleton's wit, joke, and vanity;

a good break from the doldrums of work and duty;

once in a while, go somewhere far away, feel free.

fill up the missing link of the Phylogenetic Tree.~

Frolic - Children's Game

Dr Abe V Rotor

Frolic, Photo by Choanne Nikki Sucgang

Fight for joy or fight for gain,

     It is everybody's game,

victory or loss, or pain,

     children in frolic the same. 

Wish yesterday were today

     the child grownups envy,

with all the days of play,

     to keep the peace in me.~   

When does a bath tub become a helmet?

A child's curiosity becomes a comedy to us adults
 Dr Abe V Rotor




Mark and his Bath Tub

Take time out and attend to a crying child.
    not asking why, or telling him to stop. 
a test in child psychology - if you can pass,
    if you can bridge a generation gap.  

Mark, typical of postmodern children,
    needs nonetheless the old love -
concern and attention many of us forgot.
    and all he needed is his bath tub.

That's what he needed all right, it's fine.
    But Mark didn't stop crying;
there's more than bath - it's the tub!
    and to war (gasp!) he was going.

A child soldier ready to face the world;
    or retreating to womb's comfort;  
the young generation scared, unprepared,
    Oh, it's all but laughter we sought. ~

The Art of Loafing

Dr Abe V Rotor

Also visit my other Blog
[avrotor.blogspot.com]
[Living with Nature]

Univwersity of Santo Tomas graduate students on a field trip, 
Peñablanca, Pampanga, 2010

Be like Thoreau and Darwin,

world's greatest loafers,

toying ideas that shock the world

Of Civil Disobedience,

and Survival of the Fittest.

For the mind soars to the sky

by imagination more than reason,

and time is kindest

when the body stops working

and the spirit calm,

To nurture the hidden genius,

in sparks and spurts,

otherwise spilled to waste

in worries and cares,

and undue haste.

Churchill by the Thames,

painted peace,

when the sky was burning,

and thunder and bomb

were one sound.

Audubon's birds were real

like living specimens,

with time at his command;

and Solomon halted his army

to let the ants pass in band.

Loafing, the habit and the art,

robs and rewards:

he by the hearth falls asleep

in spring; and who fishes ideas

with a fishing pole. ~

24 Postulates to Build a "Children of Nature" Culture

Our children will clean the land, water and air which we the generation before littered. They will heal the earth we defaced, damage. With generation gap closed, the task will be shared by all.
Dr Abe V Rotor

  Young biologist studies a specimen. Tree planting and home gardening 

 Summer painting workshop for kids.

1. Our children need to know the true meaning of biodiversity. Four attributes - richness in kind, population, interrelationship, ecosystem area.

Biodiversity per se does not guarantee sustainability unless integrated with functioning systems of nature.

2. Our children’s development must be holistic In all four stages: genetic, childhood, lifestyle – and fetal (in the womb). Sing, talk to your baby while in the womb.

3. Our children are at the front line and center of people’s revolution spreading worldwide.

Arab Spring is still sweeping over North Africa and the Middle East, The Syrian crisis has escalated and drawn US, Russia and other countries into the conflict, while terrorism has spread into global proportion, which covers our own Mindanao, amid threat of a nuclear war spawned by North Korea. In the US mass demonstrations are denouncing the present leadership. 

4. Our children become new heroes – heroes for the environment, martyrs for Mother Earth. Heaven is in a regained Paradise on earth.

The coming of a universal faith, irrespective of denomination is becoming a popular idea. To many, to be saved is not by faith and promise. Heaven starts here on earth.

5. Let’s prepare our children to face the consequences of loss of privacy and secrecy, from personal to institutional transparency.

Janitor fish - subject of kids' curiosity, an introduction to biology.  

“You can no longer hide. There is no place you can remain with anonymity.” Wikileak unveiled classified information about the Iraq and Afghanistan war. Bank secrecy laws and safeguards are changing. Citizens have the right to know many hidden financial transactions.

6. Our children’s involvement in social media makes them actors and not mere spectators. They become involved, concerned with issues, local and far reaching.

There is need to strengthen Development Communication (DevComm) over conventional entertainment and reactionary media.

7. Our children will inherit our aging infrastructure. Aging Infrastructure pulls down the economy, increases risk to disaster, creates ghost cities and making life miserable.

A new field of biodiversity has been born in deserted towns, on the 38th Parallel between South and North Korea, in land mines areas, ghost towns, among deserted high rise buildings, in high radiation areas like in Chernobyl (Russia) Three-mile Island (US) and Fukushima (Japan).

8. Our children are deprived of natural beauty and bounty with shrinking wildlife, conversion of farms and pastures to settlements, and destruction of ecosystems.

“Canned Nature” (delata) has become pseudo Nature Centers. Gubat sa Siyudad, Fantasyland, Ocean Park, Disneyland

9. Our children, and succeeding generations are becoming more and more vulnerable to various infirmities – genetic, physiological, psychological, pathologic.

Computer Syndrome is now pandemic, and its toll is increasing worldwide. South Korea is the worst hit. The Philippines is not far behind.

10. Our children’s learning through codification defeats logical thinking and creativity. Thus affect their reasoning power, judgment and decision, originality of thought and ideas.

More and more children are computer-dependent. They find simple equations and definitions difficult without electronic gadget.

11. Our children face the age of singularity whereby human and artificial intelligence are integrated. Robotics robs human of his rights and freedom – new realm of curtailment and suppression. (2045 – The Year Man Becomes Immortal – Time Magazine). This is falsehood!

 On-the-spot painting; wall mural painting 

12. Our children finds a world of archives - memories, reproductions, replicas – of a real world lost before their own time.

We are making fossils, biographies, dirges and lament, as if without any sense of guilt.

13. Our children will realize that optimism will remain the mainstay of human evolution, rising above difficulties and trials. Hope is ingrained in the human brain that makes vision rosier than reality.

Anxiety, depression will continue to haunt, in fact accompany progress, but these all the more push optimism up and ahead.

14. Our children are overburdened by education. They need freedom to learn in their own sweet time and enjoy the bliss and adventure of childhood and adolescence.

E-learning is taking over much of the role of schools and universities. Open Universities, Distance Learning will dwarf classroom instruction, the beginning of a new University of Plato’s dream.

15. Our children will witness in their time the beginning of a post-capitalism order, environmental revolution, rise of growth centers and shift in economic dominance and order, more green technologies, and space exploration.

This is Renaissance in in the new age.

16. Our children will continue looking for the missing links of science, history, religion, astronomy etc, among them the source of life itself and its link with the physical world.

Linking of disciplines, narrowing down the gaps of specializations, making of a new Man and culture.

17. Our children become more and more transient in domicile where work may require, and for personal reasons, and when given choice and opportunity in a global perspective, intermarriages notwithstanding.

“Citizen of the world” is a person without a specific country. He is therefore, rootless.

Humans since creation are rooted politically, culturally – and principally biologically.

18. Our children will have a family size of ideally 2 or 3 children, enabling them to achieve their goals and dreams in life. They will strengthen the middle class the prime mover of society.

A natural way of family planning and population planning, trend of industrialized countries.

19. Our children will clean the land, water and air we the generation before littered. They will heal the earth we defaced, damage. With generation gap closed, the task will be shared by all.

We must be good housekeepers of Mother Earth now.

20. Our children will be part of devolution of power, decentralization of authority, a new breed of more dedicated leaders.

Natural History exhibit at the former St Paul University Museum QC

Children hold the key to change. It’s the Little Prince that changed and saved the pilot in an ill-fated plane crash in the Sahara Desert.

21. Our children face acculturation and inter racial marriages. Melange of races is on the rise – Eurasian, Afro-American, Afro-Asian, etc – a homogenization process that reduces as a consequence natural gene pools.

Culturally and scientifically, this is dangerous. Homogenization leads to extinction of races and ultimately the species.

22. Our children will live simpler lives, going back to basics, preferring natural over artificial goods and services. In the long run they will be less wasteful that us.

There is always a hidden desire to escape when things get rough. This is instinct for survival either by detour or turning back.

23. Our children face the coming of the Horsemen of Apocalypse – consequence of human folly and frailty (nuclear, pollution, poverty). More than we grownups, they are more resilient to adapt to the test.

History tells us that this is true.

24. Postmodernism may do more harm than good for our children in a runaway technology and culture. They cannot and will not be able to keep with the pace and direction of change.

This is not true. “I am the master of my fate, I’m the captain of my soul.” (From Invictus, by William Ernest Henley).  And this is what we want our children to become – but only when they are CHILDREN OF NATURE.

Who is Lola Basyang? Folklores and Legends in Philippine Literature

Dr Abe V Rotor 

  

Severino "Lola Basyang" Reyes statue, Bagac, Bataan  

Myths and legends are most popular on the grassroots, enjoyed by both young and old, with the latter usually taking the role of a narrator of “once upon and time” and “in the land of fairies and giants” stories. And not enough they fill the imagination, proceed to tell hair-raising stories in the world of monsters and spirits. A dog howls, a bat swoops down in high pitch notes, the audience huddles closer.

Imagine Lola Basyang seated in an armchair beside a flickering hearth, children of all ages (and adults, too), begging for more stories – stories so powerful the bond of generations becomes closer and stronger. In make-believe stories the imagination is more powerful than reason, which paves to a realm of mystery and fantasy.  

Myths and legends open the gate to freedom from realities of life, seeking relief in another world, and when we return, we are transformed and humbled, we are stronger in our resolve and task.  Legends make us giants, and myths give us wings.  

We imagine our ancestors huddled around a campfire exchanging knowledge and recounting experiences, with spices of imagination and superstition. It was a prototype open university.

Throughout the ages and countless generations a wealth of native knowledge and folk wisdom accumulated but not much of it has survived.

Homer’s epics, the Iliad and the Odyssey, were carried by oral tradition of storytelling, so with Aesop’s fables, surviving many centuries and finding immortality in books and media today. And would we look farther than the timelessness of Christ lessons in parables? The Sermon on the Mount, The Prodigal Son, the Sower, The Good Samaritan. These and many more, continue to live in the home, school, and pulpit as they persisted in the catacombs in the beginnings of Christianity. Because Homer, Aesop, Christ and other early authors did not write, it is through oral history, in spite of its limitations and informal nature that these masterpieces were preserved and transcended to us - thanks to our ancestors, and to tradition itself.

Just as the Egyptians, Greeks, Romans – and even the remote and lesser ancient civilizations like the Aztecs and the Mayas had their own cultural heritage, so have we in our humble ways. Panday Pira attests to early warfare technology, the Code of Kalantiao, an early codification of law and order, the Herbolario, who to the present is looked upon with authority as the village doctor. And of course, we should not fail to mention the greatest manifestation of our architectural genius and grandiose aesthetic sense – the Banawe Rice Terraces, which through centuries spawned legends, folklores and myths unique in the culture of the place..

On the lighter side, who of us don’t know Lam-ang, our own epic hero, the counterpart of England’s Beowulf? Juan Tamad, the counterpart of Rip Van Winkle? Who would not identify himself with Achilles or Venus? Ivanhoe, Robin Hood, Lapu-Lapu, Angalo – how could boys be more happy and become real men without these and other legendary characters? And we ask the same to girls becoming women without Cinderella and Maria Makiling? On my part, like other boys in my time, boyhood could not have been spent in any better way without the science fictions of Jules Vernes – Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, Eighty Days Around the World – and the adventures of Mark Twain’s Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. It is the universality of human thoughts and values that is the key to the timelessness of tradition – indeed the classical test of true masterpieces.

And would we say the least about children stories? We can only wonder with awe at the determination of the Grimm Brothers going to the villages of Europe soon after the Dark Ages began to end, and the light of learning began to dawn again, the two scholars retrieving the fragments and remnants of stories surviving the darkest period of history of mankind. And what do we know? These stories, together with the stories from the 1001 Arabian Nights, have kept the flame of human hope and joy alive in cradles, around the hearth, on the bedside – even as the world was uncertain and unkind.

We ask ourselves, if it is only truth that can withstand the test of time. Or if it is only events that really happened constitute history. And if there were any tinge that these stories were based on the culture of a people in their own time, would we not find them, we who live on the other side of the globe and in another time, find them strange?

Rediscovering indigenous knowledge and folk wisdom enlarges and enhances our history and tradition and contribute immensely to the quaintness of living. It is to the old folks that we owe much gratitude and respect because they are our living link with the past. They are the Homer of Iliad and the Odyssey of our times, so to speak. They are the Disciples of Christ’s parables, the Fabulists of Aesop. They are the likes of the natural healers of Fuga Island, a certain Ilocano farmer by the name of Juan Magana who recited Biag ni Lam-ang from memory, Mang Vicente Cruz, an herbolario of Bolinao, Pangasinan, whom I interviewed about the effectiveness of herbal medicine. It is to people who, in spite of genetic engineering, would still prefer the taste of native chicken and upland rice varieties, old folks incanting “baribari” as they walk through the thickets to appease the unseen. ".

Mirrors of Childhood

Dr Abe V Rotor

Ilang-ilang and camia for pendant,

sampaguita for the lei;

string of abaca, by tender hands held,

craft of joy more than the pay.  

Make-believe prison in a banana grove they play,

they who  are innocent, who are free;

and we who've known life's evil that we must pay;

we grown ups, look at them with envy.

There's no traffic jam, it's only in their mind,

with neither time nor distance to gain;

pity to us, who years before, were like them;

when ideals rose, then died in vain. 

  

After the passengers are gone,

this li’l one takes the last round;

imagine this li’l helping hand

bring respite and fun. ~

Bats swoop on unwary people. Old folks warn us not to go out at dusk or at night - and never alone.

Dr Abe V Rotor

Fruit bat. A clumsy fruit bat may drop its load in the middle
of the night, and on hitting the roof of a house, sows fear about
a mannananggal or half-bodied vampire lurking around.

Internet Photo, 2012

Bats, the only true flying mammals are perhaps the most misunderstood creatures because of their ugly looks and enigmatic life embellished with superstitious beliefs and associated with fiction such as the story of Dracula, a bloodthirsty count-vampire in the world of the undead. Movies, cartoons, and children’s stories have projected a bad image of bats, giving us the impression they are enemies of mankind.

The truth is that bats are harmless, except for three known species called vampire bats that feed on the blood of animals. Seventy percent of the one thousand species of bats live on insects as their daily diet. One bat can devour 1000 mosquitoes in one hour. The bigger species eat on fruits (fruit bats). Insectivorous bats swoop down on flying insects in the dark which they detect by means of echolocation (natural radar) making it appear that they are attacking people when they get too close to them.

Bats are nature’s biological agents in controlling destructive insects. They pollinate plants that bloom only in the night, and they are very efficient in disseminating seeds of many plants. By carrying out these functions bats are crucial in maintaining the ecological balance of fragile ecosystems like the desert and chaparral. Their droppings accumulated for years in their cave dwellings make the best and safest organic fertilizer (guano). Let us protect the bats instead; they are indeed man’s valuable friends. ~

The Music of Nature - the most therapeutic sound on earth

Listen to the Music of Nature!
Dr Abe V Rotor
Also visit 
[avrotor.blogspot.com]
[Living with Nature School on Blog]
[naturalism - the eighth sense] 

Identify the sounds of nature in this painting, translate them into notes. Arrange the notes into melody, and expand it into a composition.Try with an instrument - guitar, piano, violin, flute. This is your composition.Mural detail, Nature: Rivulets and Streams, AVR 2011

Ethnic music makes a wholesome life; it is therapy.

Have you ever noticed village folks singing or humming as they attend to their chores? They have songs when rowing the boat, songs when planting or harvesting, songs of praise at sunrise, songs while walking up and down the trail, etc. Seldom is there an activity without music. To them the sounds of nature make a wholesome music.

According to researcher Leonora Nacorda Collantes, of the UST graduate school, music influences the limbic system, called the “seat of emotions” and causes emotional response and mood change. Musical rhythms synchronize body rhythms, mediate within the sphere of the autonomous nervous and endocrine systems, and change the heart and respiratory rate. Music reduces anxiety and pain, induces relaxation, thus promoting the overall sense of well being of the individual.

Music is closely associated with everyday life among village folks more than it is to us living in the city. The natives find content and relaxation beside a waterfall, on the riverbank, under the trees, in fact there is to them music in silence under the stars, on the meadow, at sunset, at dawn. Breeze, crickets, running water, make a repetitious melody that induces sleep. Humming indicates that one likes his or her work, and can go on for hours without getting tired at it. Boat songs make rowing synchronized. Planting songs make the deities of the field happy, so they believe; and songs at harvest are thanksgiving. Indeed the natives are a happy lot.

Farm animals respond favorably to music, so with plants.

In a holding pen in Lipa, Batangas, where newly arrived heifers from Australia were kept, the head rancher related to his guests the role of music in calming the animals. “We have to acclimatize them first before dispersing them to the pasture and feedlot.” He pointed at the sound system playing melodious music. In the duration of touring the place I was able to pick up the music of Mozart, Schubert, Beethoven and Bach. It is like being in a high rise office in Makati where pipe in music is played to add to pleasant ambiance of working. Scientists believe that the effect of music on humans has some similarity with that of animals, and most probably to plants.

Which brings us to the observation of a winemaker in Vienna. A certain Carlo Cagnozzi has been piping Mozart music to his grapevines for the last five years. He claims that playing round the clock to his grapes has a dramatic effect. “The grapes ripen faster,” he said, adding that it also keeps away parasites, fruit bats and birds. Scientists are now studying this claim to enlarge the limited knowledge on the physiological and psychological effects of music on plants and animals.

Once I asked a poultry raiser in Teresa, Rizal, who also believes in music therapy. “The birds grow faster and produce more eggs,” he said. “In fact music has stopped cannibalism.” I got the same positive response from cattle raisers where the animals are tied to their quarters until they are ready for market. “They just doze off, even when they are munching,” he said, adding that tension and unnecessary movement drain the animals wasting feeds that would increase the rate of daily weight gain. In a report from one of the educational TV programs, loud metallic noise stimulates termites to eat faster, and therefore create more havoc.

There is one warning posed by the proponents of music therapy. Rough and blaring music agitates the adrenalin in the same way rock music could bring down the house.

The enchantment of ethnic music is different from that of contemporary music.

Each kind of music has its own quality, but music being a universal language, definitely has commonalities. For example, the indigenous lullaby, quite often an impromptu, has a basic pattern with that of Brahms’s Lullaby and Lucio San Pedro’s Ugoy ng Duyan (Sweet Sound of the Cradle). The range of notes, beat, tone, expression - the naturalness of a mother half-singing, half-talking to her baby, all these create a wholesome effect that binds maternal relationship, brings peace and comfort, care and love.

Serenades from different parts the world have a common touch. Compare Tosselli’sSerenade with that of our Antonio Molina’s Hating Gabi (Midnight) and you will find similarities in pattern and structure, exuding the effect that enhances the mood of lovers. This quality is more appreciated in listening to the Kundiman (Kung Hindi Man, which means, If It Can’t Be). Kundiman is a trademark of classical Filipino composers, the greatest of them, Nicanor Abelardo. His famous compositions are

· Bituin Marikit (Beautiful Star)
· Nasaan Ka Irog (Where are You My Love)
· Mutya ng Pasig (Muse of the River Pasig)
· Pakiusap (I beg to Say)

War drums on the other hand, build passion, heighten courage, and prepare the mind and body to face the challenge. It is said that Napoleon Bonaparte taught only the drumbeat of forward, and never that of retreat, to the legendary Drummer Boy. As a consequence, we know what happened to the drummer boy. Pathetic though it may be, it's one of the favorite songs of Christmas.

Classical music is patterned after natural music.

The greatest composers are nature lovers – Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Chopin, Rachmaninoff, and our own Abelardo, Molina, Santiago, and San Pedro. Beethoven, the greatest naturalist among the world’s composers was always passionately fond of nature, spending many long holidays in the country. Always with a notebook in his pocket, he scribbled down ideas, melodies or anything he observed. It was this love of the countryside that inspired him to write his famous Pastoral Symphony. If you listen to it carefully, you can hear the singing of birds, a tumbling waterfall and gamboling lambs. Even if you are casually listening you cannot miss the magnificent thunderstorm when it comes in the fourth movement.

Lately the medical world took notice of Mozart music and found out that the music of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart music can enhance brain power. In a test conducted, a student who listened to the Sonata in D major for Two Pianos performed better in spatial reason. Mozart music was also found to reduce the frequency of seizure among coma patients, improved the interaction of autistic children, and is a great help to people who are suffering of Alzheimer’s disease. The proponents of Mozart’s music call this therapeutic powerMozart Effect.-------------------------------
Famous Composers and their Masterpieces inspired by Nature

• Antonio Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons,
• Ludwig Van Beethoven’s Symphony No. 6 in five movements, from lively stream, gradually building into thunderstorm,
• Claude Debussy’s “Deux Arabesques, Claire de Lune,” (misty moonlit) scene.
• Frederic Francois Chopin’s “Prelude in D Flat Major (Raindrop Prelude)”
• Edvard Greig’s ‘Peer Gynt’ “Morning Mood” 
• Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s “The Flight of the Bumblebee”.

--------------------------------

What really is this special effect? A closer look at it shows similar therapeutic effect with many sounds like the noise of the surf breaking on the shore, rustling of leaves in the breeze, syncopated movement of a pendulum, cantabile of hammock, and even in the silence of a cumulus cloud building in the sky. It is the same way Mozart repeated his melodies, turning upside down and inside out which the brain loves such a pattern, often repeated regularly. about the same length of time as brain-wave patterns and those that govern regular bodily functions such as breathing and walking. It is this frequency of patterns in Mozart music that moderates irregular patterns of epilepsy patients, tension-building hormones, and unpleasant thoughts.

No one tires with the rhythm of nature – the tides, waves, flowing rivulets, gusts of wind, bird songs, the fiddling of crickets, and the shrill of cicada. In the recesses of a happy mind, one could hear the earth waking up in spring, laughing in summer, yawning in autumn and snoring in winter – and waking up again the next year, and so on, ad infinitum. ~

Katydid, (upper photo) a long horned grasshopper (Phaneroptera furcifera), and the field cricket (Acheta bimaculata) are the world's most popular fiddlers in the insect world.

And, of course the Caruso in the animal kingdom - the frog. Here a pair of green pond frogs, attracted by their songs which are actually mating calls, will soon settle down in silent mating that last for hours.

music composers inspired by Nature 

Gulliver's World

Dr Abe V Rotor

Photos by Matthew Marlo R Rotor, Puerto Sunken Pier, San Ildefonso, Ilocos Sur Canon EOS 350

I’m Gulliver, my world’s Lilliput;

Bushes crowd by the riverbank,

Where other creatures too are small.

I’m dreaming or they have shrunk.

Now I’m in the land of the dwarfs.

The grass is tall, big is the fern,

For the giant in me is no more;

Kindness I beg for what I didn’t earn. ~

I am in an Alien World

Dr Abe V Rotor 

Drynaria fern covers the limbs of an acacia tree. Tagudin, Ilocos Sur

I wonder from far below if my sight is failing,
     or my imagination is taking me to the past,
when the giant reptiles began to form wings
     to escape the doom of a meteor's blast.

Or is a dead giant resurrecting in its wake,
     its limbs growing out into progenitors
that biology has failed to discover or probe,
     else i offer my apologies to my mentors.

I surrender each discovery I make to knowledge,
     knowledge no one can claim his own;
my poor mind has to wait for an answer, if any,
     even those before mankind was born. ~

Bitter-Sweet Pods of Acacia

Dr Abe V Rotor

Mature pods of acacia 

I wonder how you can make sugar,  

     from the sun to leaves to pods;

wouldn't the same process I know,

     unlock the secret of the gods?

I made your pods into syrup;

     if goats love it, why can't man?

But, oh, how I brought Golgotha 

     down, its taste is next to none. 

I fermented your pods into wine,

     Ambrosian taste my goal,

Oh, not even by nature's aging

     could make a drinker a fool.

I looked up at your spreading crown,

        and wondered what good you're meant,

   cracked your pods for a final taste  

       of life's bitter-sweet taste and scent. ~