Comments on Existence is Wonderful: The Tale of the Goldfish: Or, What I Learned from ...

AnneC wrote:

> The kind of place you'...

2008-08-16T19:32:00.000-07:00

AnneC wrote:

> The kind of place you're describing reminds
> me a lot of the places I was usually
> forbidden from entering as a child (we
> also lived near some small woods in
> Connecticut), but which were always so
> fascinating regardless. I still have
> a "thing" for wandering around areas
> where one is likely to find abandoned
> buildings and rotted-out cars!

You would've loved this place. The boundary between the housing development and the pinewoods was a ridge topped by a dirt road that ran perpendicular to most of the streets in the development. The pinewoods themselves were in the lower ground on the far side of the ridge. There was also a dirt road that peeled off perpendicularly from the main dirt road atop the ridge (it was down that road a ways, and then on a path into the woods, that you got to "Johnny's Pond").

That big ridge provided plenty of opportunities for the kind of tricks (daredevil stunts involving riding a bike at breakneck speed down a steep declivity and then up another) usually associated today with mountain biking.

The pine debris in the woods provided raw materials for building "forts".

The "big boys" who took me back there also tried to scare me with stories (or maybe they believed them too) that there was "quicksand" back there, that might swallow you up if stepped into it. I was actually half-disappointed that I never actually got to see any quicksand in those woods, although there were plenty of boggy areas.

The concrete storm-drainage gutters bordering the streets in the development also all ended in a big concrete drainage pipe that ran through the ridge and emptied into a gulley that was a rushing stream when it rained. When dry, that drainage pipe was a scary black tunnel that kids dared each other to crawl through. After a big summer storm, that whole drainage system was a furious water-works, with waterfalls and torrents to play in, however dangerously.

And there were junked cars back there too! One was an old Nash Metropolitan
http://www.nashcarclub.org/nccaphot/mets/54-56_7316sokyrka.jpg

I remember once, after an afternoon summer storm had ended, going back to the woods to see the water works, and the rain-soaked hot ground combined with the rain-cooled air created a thick layer of ground-fog, with tendrils of mist rising up from the muddy ground, and from the rotting interior of that old junked Nash.

> (I recently went and took pictures in
> Alviso, CA, which was pretty amazing).

One piece of modern technology I regret not having had as a child is the digital camera. I would have **loved** to take to take pictures like that.

There were fascinating places that I would have documented -- like the equipment yard my mother and I would pass on our way to the supermarket, a lot containing parked construction vehicles and tractor trailers. I always had to stop and gawk at those.

Alvaro: Thank you for stopping by and of co...

2008-08-15T18:07:00.000-07:00

Alvaro: Thank you for stopping by and of course for hosting in September - I will be sure to work on my submission. I am also really glad Chris started this whole thing -- it's hard to believe there wasn't a longevity blog carnival prior to this, as it's a great idea.

B. Brooke: Ah! Thanks for the clarification...

2008-08-15T18:01:00.000-07:00

B. Brooke: Ah! Thanks for the clarification. And I was not aware of the nature of that particular mouse outcome, so I do appreciate your drawing my attention to it.

Anne: what a beautiful post! Thank you.

Tha...

2008-08-14T11:18:00.000-07:00

Anne: what a beautiful post! Thank you.

Thanks also to Chris for putting Hourglass together...I am looking forward your contribution next month!

I was referring to one of the winners being based...

2008-08-14T06:48:00.000-07:00

I was referring to one of the winners being based solely on improved environmental conditions.

jimf: The kind of place you're describing r...

2008-08-13T19:20:00.000-07:00

jimf: The kind of place you're describing reminds me a lot of the places I was usually forbidden from entering as a child (we also lived near some small woods in Connecticut), but which were always so fascinating regardless. I still have a "thing" for wandering around areas where one is likely to find abandoned buildings and rotted-out cars! (I recently went and took pictures in Alviso, CA, which was pretty amazing).

And...yeah, I can definitely see why you'd be upset about the tadpoles. :/ There's really no such thing as "only" when one has taken on stewardship of a living thing (or many living things)...it still hurts when something happens to that living thing.

b. brooke: I've known about the Mprize for ...

2008-08-13T19:13:00.000-07:00

b. brooke: I've known about the Mprize for a long time now - since back before there was even a Methuselah Foundation. But thanks. :)

MR. CARR'S AQUARIUM

When I saw Mr. Carr's a...

2008-08-13T15:12:00.000-07:00

MR. CARR'S AQUARIUM

When I saw Mr. Carr's aquarium, I
envied him it at first, but I thought I would
get bored after a while watching the half-shy
goldfish, criss-crossing all the time.
I wondered why, then, going to Blackpool,
I thought it good bringing back live cockles,
for, though I treasured them, they always
would die, and tadpoles turned grey,
floating up dead, and the sticklebacks too.
There was no way you could feed them.
Wrong sort of play, really, and yet
I didn't want to compare
my old jars with Mr. Carr's. Funny result.
Was there any real point in being adult?

-- Edmond Wright
http://people.pwf.cam.ac.uk/elw33/hennets/horwich/play.html

> My parents. . . didn't know a whole lot a...

2008-08-13T07:47:00.000-07:00

> My parents. . . didn't know a whole lot about
> goldfish either, so they'd gotten me a small
> tank for Nigel. . . [B]y the next morning,
> I found him sitting practically motionless
> at the bottom! Even more frightening, his
> fins were turning black. . .
>
> Nigel was indeed dying in the small tank.
> The motionlessness was due to lack of
> adequate oxygen, and the fin-blackening
> was due to ammonia buildup in the water. . .

Another story from my misspent youth. ;->

One summer, between two early grades in elementary school, two of the bigger boys on my street (who were always getting me in trouble one way or another and with whom I was eventually forbidden to play) took me with them on a tadpole-catching expedition.

There was a pinewoods bordering the edge of our subdivision -- "the wilderness" from the point of view of a 6-year-old -- with a network of abandoned railroad beds running through it (the rails had long been removed but there were still rotting wooden ties in the roadbeds). At the juncture where two of these old roadbeds peeled off from one another there was a largish pool of stagnant water (which the neighborhood boys called "Johnny's Pond" and which I was strictly forbidden to go near, once my parents found out about it) containing rusting 55 gallon drums, old car tires, that sort of rubbish. And tadpoles, of course -- lots of them.

So, when I got home with my bounty of living, swimming critters -- a couple of dozen at least, in a borrowed pail -- the question naturally arose of where I was going to "keep" them. My father, who at the time worked for the Elastomers Laboratory at at DuPont installation called Chestnut Run, had once brought home (God knows why) something that looked like a **very** large milk bottle -- as big as me, at that age -- and it was decided that **that**, filled with water, would be an adequate thing to put the tadpoles in.

Well, by the next morning, several of them had already died, having changed color from their normal dark olive-brown to a sort of pale grey. Over the course of the day, many more started turning grey, and many more died. In short order, they were **all** dead. These were "only" tadpoles, not even goldfish, but I was not thrilled by this development, and it remains a painful memory to this day.

I knew nothing at that tender age about gas dissolving in liquid, and had never thought about how aqueous organisms breathe -- they "breathe water", right? Years later, of course, I realized that the surface to volume ratio of that "tank" must have been **vastly** inadequate to support anything requiring oxygen (especially without an aerator), even without the additional fatal fact that by any standards the tank had been grossly overcrowded.

The tadpoles had simply suffocated to death, and in very short order. Nasty memory.

Dear Anne,

You should find this link intere...

2008-08-13T07:28:00.000-07:00

Dear Anne,

You should find this link interesting: http://www.methuselahfoundation.org/index.php?pagename=mp_recordholders

Bobby