Glenn's Corner

With these words, the pulse quickens.  What has happened?  Another national emergency?  An earthquake?  The words imply an urgent new development.  Something worth breaking our routine to pay special attention; a new crisis.

I am drawn in.  With email and the internet I constantly check to see what is new.  “Bing” signals a new email; I switch documents to see what important news has arrived.  If I work for 10 minutes, with no “bing,” I wonder what is wrong, like a parent whose baby has finally gone to sleep.  So quiet!  Is everything okay?

And yet, more and more, the “breaking news” in the papers, on the TV, and on the internet may be something like “Exclusive Inside Look at Paris Hilton’s New Wardrobe.”  Emails come with bright red exclamation points to tell me of new pharmaceutical pricing.  We fill our heads with thousands of bits of such information.  But is this information I want?

One weekend earlier this year I turned everything off and kept it off.  On the Sunday I drove along a riverside road.  I stopped and walked a stretch.  Only when I was out of the car did I see the Vaux Swifts.  Hundreds of them.  Tiny birds, swirling back and forth above the road, dodging, twisting, spinning.  Amazingly, they were not crashing into each other.

Only by remaining still and watching did I become aware of the May flies.  Hundreds of them, slowly, gently lifting from the ground and floating upward, like small helicopters sent aloft on delicate translucent wings. Newly hatched, after months of silent, earthbound incubation.  But, every fly that I watched soon was gobbled up by a swooping swift -- caught and eaten after only moments of life! The rare fly, perhaps one in a hundred, flying low and lurking in the young oak trees, survived.

There is something almost spiritual about witnessing this coming together of birds and insects.  The flies have such a huge hatch that they can afford to lose 99% and still have enough survivors for the next generation.  The tiny Vaux Swifts (weighing in at just over half an ounce) are in the right place at the right time, finding fuel as they prepare for their journey, thousands of miles south.

Something clicks inside me, as silent witness to this scene.  These scenes are going on all the time, all over.  I simply stumbled onto this one because I took the time to unplug from electronic gadgets for the weekend, to get out and see the world.  All things have their place, contributing to the delicate balance, the beautiful simplicity of every living thing just being itself and playing an important role in the web of interwoven life.   

This is the breaking news.  This is what I want to stay tuned into.

Here is my challenge to you:  go an entire weekend without opening the newspaper, without turning on the TV or radio, without checking email, without surfing the net.  One weekend.  From Friday at 6 pm until Monday morning at 8 am.  Try it.

Then write to me.  Send me a handwritten note, in an envelope with a stamp, to 1351 Officers Row, Vancouver, WA 98661.  Tell me how your weekend was different.