That was the danger all along with Lele. But she made her choices.

Lele clearly did not want to be a caged bird. In the last couple days I only kept her in her cage at night for safety and she spent all day outside more or less by herself. Even then she hated the cage and as soon as a human – any human not just me – was in sight she’d freak out demanding to be let out. While the cage was the safest place for her with plenty of food and water she would never stay in it if the door was open – even when it was too dark for her to fly safely. We did everything we could but she clearly chose not to be an even partially domesticated bird and we didn’t force the issue.

We did make sure she knew everything she needed to know, though. So she left. Because she could.

It was a bit sad for me that day because its not like she flew up to me and said “Y’know, Dad, I’ve been thinking…” to give me some warning. No, the last time I saw her she and I were hanging out on the lawn couch. I was laying back and she was hopping around on my chest pecking at the buttons on my shirt. After a bit of particularly vigorous button hunting I figured she might be hungry so I took her over to the food at her cage. She hopped right down and started eating. Then I realized it had been a good 45 minutes or so of hanging out with her and I needed to get back to some work… and did as I often did: I slipped back inside while she was busy eating. Otherwise she would frequently want to follow me.

And that was the last time we got to hang out. I went outside about an hour later for a quick break and to check in with her and she was nowhere to be found. I looked in all the usual places then looked all over on the ground for new feathers or signs of violence. Nothing.

It felt like she was just out for an adventure so I wasn’t really worried. I went out every hour or so to see if she’d made it back but she never returned.

I was lucky to catch a glimpse of her on the last trip out for the day. It was getting on towards dark and I was worried that she’d find a safe place to sleep. I looked out across the neighborhood in thought and saw 2 adult looking mynahs and one smaller mynah with a short tail flying towards the edge of the neighborhood. The smaller one was unmistakably Lele: her baby tail feathers were all snapped off a little short because she’d spent so much time hopping around on tables while I was working. She was fine, then, and hanging out with other mynahs. While I was already pretty sure she hadn’t been eaten by a cat that set my mind at ease.

We saw her the next day, too, hanging out with a large group of juvenile mynahs. Apparently all the neighborhood mom and pop mynahs kicked out their kids en masse and Lele went with them. As she should.

So now I have somewhat mixed feelings. On the one hand… I miss her. She was fun to hang out with and I really enjoyed seeing the world through her eyes. On the other its fantastic that she’s a wild bird again. An against-all-odds success story. If she had stayed near us she’d have trouble mating and having a normal life even if she was free to come and go as she pleased. I was lucky have been “dad” to her for that short period of time, to be her anchor as she grew up, and I did it so well that she grew up and no longer needs me.

That’s what good parents do, right?

Part of me wants to wander down to that corner of the neighborhood and go visit her. I’m sure she remembers still and I sort of want to remind her so she doesn’t forget. But the wiser part of me tells me not to. Let her go. Its the best thing for her to be free and to forget her past association with people. She’ll be happier and safer. My role in her adventure appears to be over.

Who knows? Maybe she’ll come back and visit. In any case, we’ve decided not to disassemble the larger cage we built for her. You never know when a precocious fledgling is going to need a foster home for a while.

So when I was asked if I had a Hawaiian name I had to think very carefully how to answer.

I was at an international gathering of youth workers and rites of passage specialists. The irony of it was that I was just there as a cameraman even though I knew more than enough about the subject to add to the discussion. That being the case I participated much more in the off-time activities than most cameramen would.

One of the things I “missed out” on, though, was a session where a Native American teacher spoke of the power of naming, becoming a truer version of yourself by changing what you are called. In the process several “Native American names” were given out to the participants.

Now I have to be very clear here: for those participants it was a moving experience. That can’t be denied and I’m not intending to diminish that fact.

But from my point of view as an anthropologist… yeah… I would have had a hard time keeping a straight face had I been at those sessions. Creating for someone a perceived connection to a culture that isn’t theirs and they can’t readily understand may be doing a disservice to both the participant and to the culture. In the bag of intercultural dialog tools this falls into the category of “cheap trick.”

It wound up being a big deal at the conference, though. Lots of people got “Indian Names” and they were the topic of much discussion. Again, I have to be honest in that a lot of those conversations were deep, meaningful and fruitful. Its a wonderful teaching exercise… as long as it not confused with anything real. But these folks were treating it as real.

I’m just a cameraman, I thought to myself. These are good people wrestling with important issues and a bit of confusion along the way is to be expected.

At one point someone came up to me, took a moment to register that I was a person and not just a hired help camera guy, smiled and said

“Say, you live here in Hawaii, right? Do you have a Hawaiian Name?”

The answer to that is “no” but I knew that saying so would probably lead to a longer conversation where I’d be tempted to spill my opinion of how ridiculous the naming thing was. So I said “yes”

“Wonderful! What is it?”

I thought back to a gathering I had attended several months previous. It was a celebration of the passing of a Hawaiian woman and many people in the extended community were invited. My roommate is one of those community members and I’ve been around enough that I was a known quantity, a musician… sure bring the haole boy along.

At one point I had been talking with one of my friend’s cousins and we’d been enjoying the conversation. We drifted apart to get more food and drink but he had some more things he wanted to talk about. He couldn’t recall my name right away and so called out across the music and bustle of conversation

“Hey! Haole boy!”

I heard “Haole boy!” float across the yard and knew that I was the only person present that it could possibly refer to. Haole is a word commonly used to refer to white people. In itself it is not a nice term but, as with almost everything Hawaiian, the context that it is used in shapes the meaning. I turned to see who had called and saw the cousin looking back at me with a half tense, half inquisitive look on his face. He wasn’t quite sure how I was going to take it. He didn’t mean any offense by using the word haole… but that’s the problem with haoles: they never seem to understand what you mean.

I smiled, nodded and started making my way back across the yard. He and the people standing around him got a good laugh out of that, but not at my expense. They were laughing at the moment because it was funny and paradoxical. If you can calmly accept being called a haole without being offended… it means you’re probably not a haole.

I knew the person who had asked about my “Hawaiian Name” would understand none this and being from the mainland probably didn’t even know what the word haole meant, so…

“My name is Haole Boy!” I proclaimed proudly for his benefit.

He clapped me on the back, said “Good for you!” as if this somehow improved the quality of my life and went on his way.

I’ve have been chuckling about my “Hawaiian Name” ever since.

He died before I turned 30 and I never asked him what was coming next.

Happy Father’s Day, Dad.

I’ve thought back to those moments many times over the years. I might have been explaining the reason I was a vegetarian or espousing why herbal medicine was better than anything else… but my father’s response was always the same: respectful, if somewhat amused, interest. He didn’t agree with or participate in my adventures but he seemed to vicariously enjoy my journey by talking about it and asking me questions.

Then his eyes would glaze over as he looked into and through me and he’d speak from a distance I couldn’t comprehend. Almost the same thing every time.

“I’m proud of you, son. You’re exactly where you’re supposed to be. This is what your 20′s is all about: smashing your ideals against the world until they break. Then what you have left over is real.”

I’m not going to revise history and fantasize my father into a Wise Elder – he was as flawed a human as any of us – but in those moments I could feel a depth of understanding, of perspective, that was greater than mine. These are the moments when I first recognized what an elder is.

He was right. I’m fortunate that our relationship was clear and strong enough that he knew I respected him, that I matured enough to see that he was right without taking offense or feeling diminished by it.

It was only when I approached 30 and he was already gone that I realized my loss in never asking him what my 30′s would be like. Or my 40′s.

Chances are he hadn’t really thought about it. Chances are that he never would unless I asked. Then he’d have to opportunity for another Elder Moment and synthesize his experience of life from a new perspective.

If only I had asked. Or if we’d had more time to sit on the kitchen counter, eat salt and vinegar potato chips and tell each other stories.

He was not a perfect human being but I miss him. Love you, dad. Happy Father’s Day.

It has been several years since I moved to Hawaii and stopped working directly with the model and it has been interesting to see how the model applies to life, work and vision outside the relatively small circles of programs related to it.

First, the “road map” of human meta-cultural DNA that the model attempts to clarify and codify is always applicable to the individual. The core routines, shields, and cultural principles always hold valuable insight for me. If I’m stuck in one or more aspects of life there is always a way to flank the blockage and shake it loose. As a personal reflection and growth tool, the 8 Shields Model is pretty darned handy.

Beyond that it gets much trickier to integrate. And to a point, the better you are at using the model personally, the more your internal language reflects it… the harder it is to express both yourself and the model in mixed company.

Cue Monty Python voice:

“It’s only a model.”

Silly as that YouTube link may be… its not too far off from what “The Model” looks and sounds like to just about everyone else if you aren’t careful in how to go about expressing it.

I’ve found that the best thing to do is not to explain it. I don’t even bring it up. No one cares about Tom Brown or Jon Young. Ingwe who? Uh, huh.. boy scouts, Africa… wait, where does the turtle come in again? Tracking… you mean like UPS? Sure, the Mohawk, I’ve heard of them: pretty violent, weren’t they? Killed a bunch of white colonists? Right… I need to get going… talk to you later…

Here in Hawaii it’s even worse. The whole seasonal cycle, such an easy way to show how the model is based on natural patterns, doesn’t exist here. Sure, you can divide the year up into 4 chunks but only westerners do that. Here the year is divided in half – K’au, or the dry season, and ho’oilo, the wet season. The whole “white hair and cold bones of the elder in the North” just doesn’t apply. The ~concept~ does but the imagery used to illustrate it does not.

And this serves to highlight how insidious the language we use to talk about the 8 Shields Model can be. Even though the concepts we are talking about are universal the stories and language we use to share those concepts is specific to our experience. If you confine the concepts too strongly in the iconography and imagery of a particular place it will fail to translate to other places.

And if you identify yourself too strongly with that iconography and imagery… YOU will fail to translate to other places.

It’s a model. Its a map. Its a model and map of something. That something is the world around you and within you. The many sit spot stories from the Kamana Program and the Art of Mentoring program, for example, are inspiring and informative… but what happens at YOUR sit spot is real. Your sit spot experiences will be completely different than Tom’s or Jon’s or mine. The model, represented here by the stories, then serves as a vehicle to better understand and deepen your own experiences – not to define them.

The key thing to realize is that how we learn the model is often vastly different from how we apply it. I can’t do an Art of Mentoring with my Hawaiian friends. The way I learned the model holds little resonance for them and its up to me to find some way to apply my knowledge of the model to my way of being here. For example:

When I’m sitting with a group of Hawaiians telling derogatory (and deserved) stories about how Haole’s (“tourists” in Kamana-speak) always get Hawaiian culture wrong, always do the wrong things even with the right intentions… I just listen. Because of this I am not Haole, not painted with that same brush. Instead I tend to be treated as ilikea – a “little bit white.”

As the conversation continues it sometimes moves into derisive remarks about how disconnected the Haole is. No roots. No awareness. No humility. No sense of greater responsibility. No wonder they make a mess everywhere they go. Why can’t they just leave Hawaiian culture alone instead of co-opting it and turning it into something its not and never was? They never get it.

“We have to start somewhere. How will we ever relearn what a healthy culture is if no one shows us?”

That comment, quietly spoken by the lone ilikea that everyone seems to have forgotten was there, can change the conversation. It shifts from being motivated by feeling misunderstood and disrespected to feeling sad and long suffering, but determined – like an elder brother trying to find a way of helping a younger sibling who is lost in the world. Which is the situation, is it not?

Imagine if I had instead told the story of Jon Young standing on the street corner. Or waxed eloquent about the importance of elders. Or explained how the core routines can magically turn haoles into ilikeas. Look at me! Look at what I know! I know how to solve your problems!

That. Is. Haole.

That is not respectful. Not effective. Not coyote.

Its a very fine edge you walk as a person between cultures. The 8 Shields Model is invaluable in helping navigate those treacherous waters but useless in providing the language for you to bridge those yawning cultural chasms. As much as the model’s language is inspired by native tradition and the natural world we have to be very, very clear that it is NOT a native tradition. Not even close. It’s a model – and a model in and of itself is a very western way of looking at things.

At its best the model as we speak of it is the best attempt we know of to identify a path to regain a sustainable and healthy mindset, culture and way of life. At its worst it looks like a bunch of white people trying to act native. Both observations are “true”: which one other people see depends on you.

It’s only a model. Don’t think of yourself as the representative or ambassador of a model. Instead, be the change you wish to see in the world, embody fully the principles, routines and practices that the model provides and let the insight that arises from them serve as your road map to your new place – be it emotional, spiritual or physical.

And when you speak of your insights use your own voice, your own words and speak the language of the people you are speaking to. It’s only a model but you are a person. So are the people around you. Connect as people and don’t let the model become yet another cause for division and misunderstanding.

He and his wife figured out that it must be a lost, tame Mynah and eventually heard through the neighbor in between that we had a tame Mynah, too. A call and a short walk later Lele was once again in her cage in my room. Thanks to Meadow and Jesse she was alive, healthy and well fed.

You can imagine how relieved and happy I was.

While there are more interesting moments in the tale of Lele, this more or less brings us up to the present. We fixed her larger outdoor cage so she can’t get out but we’ve only been keeping her in there at night. During the day she comes and goes as she pleases. If I’m around she’d usually want to stay near me so I’d move my laptop around the yard and work while she got to know the whole place.

I noticed that she wouldn’t go up in the trees – a critical place for her to feel comfortable – so I move my office out under the mac nut trees and put her up in the branches when she started getting bored. When she got comfortable there I put her higher up. Soon she was happily hopping around in the tree like a…. well, like a bird.

Last night just as dusk was thinking about falling it started to rain. Perfect, I thought to myself, and went outside to see how Lele was handling the rain. It was her first time out in the rain on her own. She was hanging out on Rudy’s shoulder watching him eat watermellon under the shelter of the tarp. (sigh) Alright, little one, night is falling… now what are you going to do?

Naturally she sat on my shoulder. I walked out into the rain. She was getting wet, she shook the rain out of her eyes and hopped around trying to get comfortable. While my shoulder was safe it wasn’t comfortable. I put her on my hand and held it just under the overhanging plexiglass we have on top of her cage.

Again I could see her realizing something new. Oh. When it rains get under shelter. Oh. My food and water are both under the same shelter. Oh. Oh, I see how this works. She still didn’t want to go into her cage for the night, though. I don’t think she ever will like being in there more than being outside.

Today, as has been largely the case the past 3 or 4 days, she spent all day outside mostly on her own. I check on her once every hour or 2 just because I can’t stop being “dad” and she’ll hang out with us when we’re working outside. She eats bugs and some of the bird food we have for her. She drinks out of the water catchment for the garden like the other birds do. She easily avoids the cats and they’re learning that she’s not an easy target anymore. Sometimes when I check on her she’s super excited to see me and just wants to hang out. Sometimes she just gives me passing notice. I guess I’m going to have to let her go, at least let go of her constant company – but I’m sure I’m going to miss it. 

Today when it started raining she flew up into the mac nut trees for safety and shelter instead of to my shoulder under my hat.

My little Lele is growing up and behaving like a normal bird.

Except when she’s helping me paint or wanting to hang out on my shoulder. I guess like most dads I’m in no hurry for my little one to stop wanting to hang out with me. I’m just going to enjoy it while I can.

Then she was gone.

After almost 2 weeks living with me in my room the time finally came to move Lele outside. We built her a nice large home (Ok… cage) protected from the wind and rain and I decided to see how she’d like it.

Not at all. She escaped within 5 minutes and happily flapped and chattered back to my shoulder the moment I appeared to come check on her. Back to the drawing board.

I moved her smaller cage outside and would leave her there when we weren’t hanging out together outside. She still hated being caged but as long as I wasn’t in sight she would settle down, rest and watch the world around her. I’d make time to go outside and explore the yard with her at least once every 2 hours.

It was working well. She learned to hunt bugs for herself and supplement that with the bird food in her cage. She learned to drink. She was learning her way around the small world of our backyard and loving life.

She was not learning to be careful of the cats, though, and would watch them walk right up to her if she noticed them at all. Drastic measures were called for and I cautiously let one of our cats attack her, a rite of passage. She was sitting on my foot at the time and watched the cat stalk up.

I felt terrible, but it worked. She shrieked and flew up to safety when the cat got her. Kolu hit her in the face and she had a little spot of blood just above her beak. Only afterwards did I think “That could have been her eye…” But it accomplished what it needed to and she started being more careful around the cats. She even avoided 2 more attacks without me: one by the neighbor cat and another one from our bird lover Kolu.  She was learning and I was getting less worried.

Less worried, but still worried. I wasn’t a papa mynah and I wasn’t sure she was learning all that she needed to simply because I’m not a bird. Once when she had gotten blown into the neighbors yard her parents flew down to help guide and protect her. She didn’t respond to them much but I wondered if they’d get reacquainted if I gave them space.

I herded all 3 of our confused cats into the house (“Usually you won’t let us in, now you won’t let us out? What gives?!”) and resolved to let Lele do her thing. I’d hide when I checked on her because if she saw me she’d come flapping and chattering to The Shoulder. It worked the first few times but then she figured out my hiding spots or looked more carefully for me. Then I couldn’t really check on her at all. It took about 20 minutes after I left for her parents to come down and check her out so there was nothing to do but leave and hope things worked out OK.

The first time I poked my head around the corner after 30 minutes her parents were feeding on the ground next to her. I carefully went back inside so as not to disturb them. Perhaps it was working!

After about another 30 minutes I poked my head back out, but I couldn’t see her. I could see her parents over in the neighbors yard but she wasn’t with them. I left my hiding spot knowing that she come as soon as she saw me.

But the familiar flap and chatter never came. She was gone. I looked all over the yard, peered across the good neighbor fences and looked for a small mynah bird as far as I could see but she simply wasn’t there. I walked around everywhere she liked to hang out calling her name. Nothing.

Then I saw it. One feather bent in 2 places near her cage. I hadn’t noticed it at first because there were several  feathers nearby from an older kill, but this feather was clearly from a young bird and clearly fresh. She wasn’t just gone, she was dead. The neighbor cat had gotten my little Lele. There was no blood and no body, but the tell tale feather made it as clear as it could be.

I learned something about myself in the next several hours. One was that no matter how glibly we had talked about “she was already dead when she fell from the tree so anything more is a bonus”… I was really sad that little Lele had become a grisly chew toy for a well fed cat. Another was that I had really enjoyed her company… and I hadn’t realized just how much until she wasn’t there anymore. I had spent too much time worrying about what to do as her guide in life to just enjoy being with her.

Another was how much I enjoyed the changes she had brought about in my life. It was nice having something to get out of bed for in the morning. It was nice having “someone” to plan things around. It was nice spending so much time outside on her account. It was nice, but now she’s gone. I’ve been in that situation before, too.

For 2 days every flap of a bird wing when I stepped outside brought my head around hoping that it was Lele magically returned from the dead. I felt foolish each time that happened but my head moved of its own accord anyway. I’d console myself with “she lived 2 weeks longer than she would have” and “she had a good life while it lasted” and such but nothing would quite sooth the aching feeling that she was dead and it was pretty much my fault for hoping she’d grow up too quickly.

I should have trusted her instincts that told her to stay near me. I should have trusted that she’d learn and grow as she naturally would even with a human “parent.” I should have spent more time with her while I could. I should have.. should have… should have…

I should have looked more carefully at the piece of paper taped to the stop sign down at the corner. “Found tame Mynah Bird.” She was 2 houses down living in a rabbit cage.

(To be continued…)

One of the most annoying things about indoor birds is that they poop and they can go just about anywhere. It truly is messy.

Lele has was rapidly reaching the point where her ability to fly and explore was exceeding my patience for covering up anything that couldn’t get pooped on – like my pillow. Soon it would be time for her to move outside. Where the cats live.

Lele had moved into my room and the roommates had returned from Far Away with a surprise: a larger cage for her! I loved it: she’d have more room, there were several doors for her to fly in and out of and it came with nifty food and water bowls. I was still feeding her rehydrated cat food by hand every 2 hours or so and I was somewhat looking forward to her learning how to feed herself. I didn’t really mind as its very sweet and endearing the feed a baby… but her need for food, her increasingly loud begging voice, her growing abilitiy to fly and her tendency to love being on my shoulder (right next to my ear) all combined to make being “dad” a bit tiring at times.

So she lived in the cage until it was about feeding time and then we’d hang out some. Or that was my plan. I liked that plan. Lele didn’t. She had been fine in a box where she couldn’t see. She had been fine in a plexiglass box where she could see and couldn’t get out but didn’t understand why. She figured out the black bars of the cage really quickly, though, and understood exactly how trapped she was. If the cage was covered or I was not in the room she settled down but if I was around, even right next to the cage, she’s freak out because she couldn’t get to me. I didn’t have the heart to coup her up completely so she mostly hung out with me when I was home and in my room.

It worked well for a while. I found a way to wrap some large bandanas around the back of my office chair to catch the inevitable poo and she liked to hang out there. I also selected several good shirts for perch / poo duty as my shoulder was still her absolute favorite place to be. And I must say that having a baby bird peacefully sleeping on your shoulder while you work is a very sweet thing. I did do a lot of laundry there for a while, though.

She watched me work until she started getting hungry. Then I’d feed her – which was a challenge as she always wanted to sit on my shoulder. Ever try using chopsticks to stuff soggy cat food down the throat of a small bird sitting on your shoulder where you can just barely see her with one blurry eye? Sometimes with your non-dominant hand? Then she’d poop a bit, hop/flap around a bit before returning to The Shoulder for a nap snuggled up against my neck. Awwww.

Then she started “helping” me work. She’d hop down off my shoulder and peck at my mouse, keyboard and the touch screens of my tablet and laptop. “This is what we birds do for a living, right dad?” Uh, no, little one. You need a completely different set of skills. So we started making regular trips outside and I started showing her around the yard. She loved it. It also became readily apparent that she was never going to be happy as a caged, indoor bird. I’d dig up worms and she’d eat them. I’d find bugs and try to feed them to her but catching a small bug with chopsticks isn’t as easy as you might think. It was great to spend some time outside with her and I felt like I was reintroducing her to the world she had almost lost as well as to a new world, a human world, that she had gained.

Our 3 cats liked having her outside, too. The first cat to try for her was actually our worst hunter, Kahi. Kahi is a lomi cat: a lump of love and fur that lives to cuddle and stretch but doesn’t have a mean bone in his body. Poor Kahi. He must have thought “Wow! Here’s a bird I can actually catch!” and tagged her – much more quickly than I thought he could move – when she flew from the high shelf where I had “safely” put her to a lower table that she was more familiar with. I couldn’t move quite fast enough to prevent it and I understood in that moment that cats were designed to do just this sort of thing.

Kahi then went flying. I didn’t hit him. I love him, too, so I was very careful not to hit him. I pushed him. Hard. Hard enough that he flew about 8 feet and hit a sturdy metal ladder hard enough to knock it over. He landed with a startled thump and bolted in terror when the ladder clanged and banged to the ground beside him. Poor Kahi. I knew he was just doing what came as instinct… but then so was I. Something threatened the young one under my care so it was quickly removed from being a danger. I worried that I threw him too hard and apologized to him later (and made sure he wasn’t hurt) but he has never tried to attack Lele again. And being the tenderhearted snugglepuss that he is he still loves me.

Lele was fine. A bit startled and confused, but fine. Unfortunately it had all happened so fast that I wasn’t sure it registered for her that Cat equals Danger. That was going to be her biggest challenge in life as an outdoor bird and I really hoped she would figure it out. Especially since she was clearly choosing not to be a caged bird.  It was an uncomfortable, in between time for us. She was too energetic, curious, and eager to learn and explore to stay in her cage, too messy to stay indoors uncaged but to young and inexperienced to fend for herself outside. What she needed was outdoor time, and lots of it, with a degree of protection against the cat – both ours and the various neighborhood cats.

Fortunately I have always been ready for mobile productivity so I just packed my laptop and tablet out the backyard and babysat (fledgling-sat?) Lele as she learned to stand on her own two feet in the wide, dangerous and fascinating outdoor world.

(To be continued…)

Did you know that its illegal? One moment that little bird was one among millions of young birds doomed to die horribly that spring, and the next it is a federally protected individual with rights and you could be breaking the law by helping it.

Silly, isn’t it?

It isn’t, actually. The law may be poorly written and occasionally poorly interpreted, but as it turns out our little Lele, a fledgling Mynah as of this writing, is a pet much in demand. Apparently tame Mynahs – that is birds imprinted on humans early enough in their lives to make loving pets – are very rare indeed and sell for around $500. The law was written to punish opportunistic nest robbers looking to make a profit by stealing perfectly normal young birds from their wild lives and selling them for a quick profit.

We weren’t looking for a quick profit, though. It was more like “Wow, this young bird survived a long fall and almost survived a grown cat… maybe she deserves to live.” Since her parents weren’t able to help her do that after she jumped out of the nest it fell to us.

And we liked the idea of having a human oriented wild bird around the yard, I do have to admit.

But 2 days in it didn’t look like that was going to happen. She wasn’t getting used to me at all it seemed. Each meal was a repeat of the last: every 2 hours she had to go through the stress of being approached by a Big Scary Thing and relearn that I wasn’t hurting her… I was feeding her. It was stressful for both of us. If she wasn’t going the get used to me then I had to resign myself to being a Big Scary Thing for the next month or 2 until she was grown enough to fend for herself. That was not an appealing plan of action.

She was fairly comfortable with me right after she was done eating, though, so I decided early on to hold her – in her box at first so she wouldn’t get too stressed out – and spend a little time with her in that half trusting space. It didn’t last long. After just a minute she’d start squirming and squawking so I’d say soothing things in soothing tones and gently put her back in her shredded newspaper lined box. Then I’d read or surf the web for a while near her box where she could see me. Each time it would seem like we were making progress but 2 hours later it was back to square one.

Finally I decided that drastic measures were needed. Half way through the 3rd day I fed her then said “Look, little one. You either need to get it that I’m not a threat or this isn’t going to work. So I’m just going to hold you until you figure that out.” With that I cupped her in both hands and lifted her out of the box. I just stood there with her. She was so small that she backed fully into the protective cave of my hands with only her head sticking out. She felt sort of safe being completely covered but she was being covered by my hands. I calmed myself, breathed deeply and just let her go through whatever process she needed to go through.

At first she struggled to get deeper into her “cave” and hide. Then she sat there shivering and breathing heavily for a while and pulling her head in as far as she could. I fought to quell the rising tension in me that I was just stressing her out more. How long would I hold her if she didn’t start getting more comfortable? What would I do if she didn’t get it?

Then the famed intelligence of the Mynah bird took over. I watched it happen. One moment she was a terrified wild bird in a strange place and the next… she stopped the shivering and the labored breathing, poked her head out of her “cave” and started to look around. She was curious and that inquisitiveness overcame her fear once she realized she wasn’t, in fact, about to be eaten.

It was a special moment for me, quite powerful to witness. In that moment of curiosity she chose a new life, firmly committed herself to a path begun when she fell out of the coconut tree. She was no longer exactly a wild bird. I didn’t force her to do that but the situation made it the best choice for her and I had done all I could to help her see it. Her intelligence, curiosity and awareness conspired to break her out of a natural tendency, now a rut, that no longer served her. I’ve been in that situation a few times myself.

After one or two more moments of “Ah! Run! Big Scary Thing!” when I removed the hand cupped over her and set her down on the table, she settled in and we played some simple exploration games. Hide and seek sort of works with baby birds, come to find out. At first she was still following the instinctual programming to hide but when I found her, acted surprised and ducked back behind the box she was hiding behind a few times she got curious again and came out to find me. She learned to hop up on my hand and I took her around the room so she could see everything. She looked at everything intently from my hand – which now represented safety.

And eventually the inevitable happened: she found The Shoulder. In what seemed as instinctive and hard coded into her as her previous urge to hide, she discovered that my shoulder was simply the best seat in the house.

(To be continued…)

You know, a photo? Taken on film, developed with chemicals and printed on photo paper? One of those.

I haven’t seen an in-the-flesh photo for a while but seeing the gorgeous young family in print reminded me of finding a box full of old, faded B & W and sepia ancestral photos in my dad’s closet when he passed on. There was a picture of my grandfather who I had never met. I sat for a few moments looking at the tenuous connection with my unknown past and thanked my father’s obsession with photography that brought it down through the ages to my hands.

As much as I love the convenience and power of digital photography I’m pretty certain that my  grandchildren aren’t going to stumble across a box full of 50 year old backup hard drives and be able to view my photo collection.

Digital media is a two-edged sword. On the one hand it democratizes the process of creating and sharing pictures, videos and recordings in a way that no previous technology was able to achieve. On the other it has made that media a thing of the moment: snapped with a cellphone, shared with the press of a button and quickly buried beneath the storm of bite sized status updates and “So-and-so found a lost sheep on his Farmville Farm and needs someone to take care of it!” announcements in the facebook news feed.

We have way more media than ever before and yet hardly any of it will outlive the delivery medium de jour. I almost think that future historians will look back at this “digital revolution” as a kind of dark age from which very little material artwork of enduring quality emerged. A brief high of media productivity that leaves little to no trace in the historical record.

“My computer crashed and won’t start! Can you save the pictures on the hard drive?”

That’s a common plea for help for me as a freelance computer technician. In most cases the answer is yes, but it strikes me that digital media is so fragile, so ephemeral. Its also dependent on a variety of formats: the physical media format; the hardware sockets, drivers and OS to read that format; the logical format the media is stored as, and the software to interpret it.

A perfect example is the box full of 3.5″ floppy drives we found while cleaning out our deep storage in the garage a few months back. Even if the old disks still worked do you still have a floppy drive around anywhere? Does anyone you know? If you did  find one… would it be worth the time and effort to go through the slow buzz, pop and rattle of reading each weary disk and copying the old data to an new medium? And what’s this? Wordperfect files?! That was a DOS program! What do I do with that?

An even less extreme example: I have hundreds of gigabytes of photos, videos and multitrack recording session files archived on hard drives. IDE hard drives. All of our computers use SATA drives, as do all of our currently connected external drive bays. I have one IDE drive bay that still works. I think. I haven’t hooked up for a while.

The right thing to do, I suppose, is to hook that thing up and transfer the data from the 8 or 9 IDE drives I have (most under 300GB) and transfer them all to one of the 2 terrabyte drives I have currently in use. Then I can throw away the 10 pounds or so of old steel, silicon and magnetic media in obsolete small drives. One of them is even an 8.5GB drive. I have several USB flash drives larger than that.

In doing so I’d be following the great tradition of the monks living the Dark Age monasteries who would painstakingly copy each book in the library by hand to preserve them from the inevitable ravages of time. These days the process is faster and easier but also has to be done every other year or so instead of every other lifetime or so. And if that process ever stops for a gap of 10-15 years at most that media will quickly fade into obsolescence.

Regardless of what ancestral treasures that box of hard drives once held, my grandchildren will have no choice but to just throw them away. We may well be that last generation to commonly find a box full of old family photos and the first generation since the dawn of photography not to be found in them.

In the grand scheme of things this isn’t really a big deal. Prior to the advent of home photography only those people rich enough to commission the painting of a portrait had much hope of their image outliving them. All the same I think its wise to recognize how ephemeral and tenuous the “information age” might be.

What you have to know is that its not a great screen. I’ll be quite honest: compared to just about any LCD screen of comparable size that you are likely to find anywhere today… the Pixel Qi screen really sucks. Its low res (only 1024 × 600,) grainy (due to the touch overlay added by Notion Ink) and has pretty wretched viewing angles with the backlight both on and off.

But its the only device currently on the market that lets you sip a cocktail on a sunny Hawaiian beach while updating your blog. And in my case it might even be solar powered.

The sunlight readable mode of the Pixel Qi (or PQ for short) screen is essentially an LCD screen with the backlight completely off. The PQ screen has a reflective layer that allows ambient light to reflect back through the screen in place of the backlight. Voila. Unlike normal LCD screens it gets more viewable the brighter the light gets.

That does a couple things that I really like. First, it makes the Adam a sort of all terrain vehicle of tablet computing. It s the only LCD device I’ve ever used that is truly visible in any lighting conditions. Using it as a GPS in the truck on a sunny day? No problem. Sitting at the park in the dappled shade of the Ironwood trees? No problem. Its not a bad trade off for the lower overall quality of the screen if you like relaxing outside with the internet.

Second, the backlight is off. Those of you that have wrestled with getting the most life out of a mobile device’s battery well know that the screen backlight is one of the big power suckers. With the Adam in Q mode the thing sips power and the battery life goes way up. With some clever planning of your lighting conditions you can nurse a huge amount of screen time out of the Adam. I can even use it inside with ambient daylight streaming in the windows, though it is fairly dim.

The PQ screen is why I bought the Adam. I had a Plan. And so far that Plan has played out very well. I’ve been able to fairly easily power the Adam via several small, homemade solar panels.

I know that not very many people would follow me into that kind of madness, but its the kind of hardware tech tinkering that I quite enjoy.

About a year ago I bought a bunch of small, reject solar cells designed to be installed in satellites. They crank in full sunlight but their performance drops off quickly in shade and off angles: satellite cells aren’t designed for atmospheric variations. They were cheap, though, and very easy to assemble. My goal when I got them was to build a series of small, portable panels that I could use to power a laptop. That’s a very challenging task as the standard laptop draws between 30 and 60 watts. With my letter sized panels I can get about .5 amps each at 12volts… to a 60 watt laptop would need require 10 panels.

I made 3 for 1.5amps (~18 usable watts) and used them to charge an old motorcycle battery. That would then power the laptop for a while and was quite the fun experiment… but it wasn’t really all that convenient.

The Adam, however, in its lowest power state (PQ mode with the internal batteries not charging) only draws around 5 watts. At its highest power state it draws 18 or 19 watts. My 3 little panels should be enough to power it. Turns out they aren’t quite due to the satellite cells demanding pure, direct light for full output but adding a 4th panel did the trick. The 4 panels fold up to about the size of a laptop and fit in a messenger bag with the Adam, a USB keyboard, a 7 amp hour battery from radio shack and its charge controller, and the various cables and whatnot I need to make it all work. And there is still room leftover for my keys, wallet, phone and journal.

The entire first month and a half I had it I never plugged it into the wall. Its more geeky than it is convenient but it has been an interesting exercise in scaling back a high energy consumption lifestyle and replacing it with something more energy sustainable. On cloudy days you find yourself noticing each break out of sunlight. Quick! Get the solar panels out and charge up the battery! Or… wait… is that rain? Quick! Get the panels out of the rain! It was a very odd and technocentric avenue of connecting with the day’s natural rhythms but I love that kind of apparent irony.

It has some theoretical practical applications, as well. Here in Hawaii we are prone to a wide variety of natural disasters. It may be paradise but its one of the few places in the world where earthquakes, hurricanes, tsunamis and volcanic eruptions are all fairly normal occurrences. The power could go off (snap!) like that and not come back on for days, even weeks. An earthquake could reduce our homes and roads to chaotic rubble in a matter of minutes. An Adam with an outdoor viewable screen, a few portable solar panels and a digital library of emergency manuals makes for an emergency-ready replacement for when Google is temporarily unavailable. I even have a copy of Wikipedia on the device.

And a wikipedia app that even reads it outloud to you.

I’m such a geek.