Category: Somewhat Current Events

On Thursday, March 22, at 9:00 pm National Geographic Channel will show the long-awaited-fourteen-months-in-production special about the red-winged blackbirds falling out of the sky December 31, 2010. (I blogged here about this phenomena on March 4, 2011.)

The title of the special is “Signs of the Apocalypse.”  Originally the show was to air on December 22, 2011, then for some unknown reason was rescheduled to the March date.  I figured NatGeo had negative reaction to an end-times special showing three days before Christmas, but that’s just my best guess.

On New Years Eve 2011, Beebe residents living near the birds’ roosting place were asked to refrain from shooting fireworks, lest there be a more bird deaths.  Most complied, but ‘someone’ (presumed to be not from the neighborhood) did set off a large round of fireworks near the roost. The result was 400 dead birds ‘falling from the sky.’  This would seem to prove, at least it’s strong evidence for me, that fireworks were always the cause.

I will say here that since I wrote about it a year ago I have learned that most blackbirds move somewhere else in the summer, so not many are around to be frightened by Independence Day fireworks. Also, these birds have poor night vision (and they fly crazy) contributing to the flying into things scenario.

I don’t know what all this will do to the NatGeo apocalyptic theory.  If indeed it is a theory. Or is the title of the special a teaser, meant to pique interest?  If that’s the case, it worked. I’ll be watching.

The scripture for today was Miriam’s song of praise after God parted the Red Sea, led the Israelites across and then let the sea fall on the Egyptians. The writer of Adult Bible Studies (Cokesbury, The Methodist Publishing House) suggested that some might be disturbed by Miriam’s poem for its military mood and violent language (“horse and rider thrown into the sea”). But, he goes on to point out, the Bible “reports things as they are, not as we wish they were.” And things were violent during Old Testament times (New Testament, too). I don’t have a problem with Miriam praising God and saying, “The Lord is a Warrior…”

However, this does remind me of a pet peeve: Taking yesterday’s heroes and judging them by today’s yardstick. There is a trend today to out every famous person’s past mistakes.  And on a slow day, some media personnel searching for sensation look at past presidents, founders of our country, heroes of United States history and point out all their faults.  Ahhh, this one owned slaves, that one had a mistress, another obviously had Asperger’s or ADHD. (Undiagnosed of course, because no one had heard of it back then. But we can pin point it because we saw a PBS special once.)

All this makes me wonder if some time in the future, when the world is enlightened, when there are universal child labor laws, when the world knows what our hunger for the newest electronics has cost in human sacrifice . . . what will historians look back at the leaders of 2012 and say?  “They did a valiant job facing economic challenges, addressing climate change and health care. But they all owned iPhones!”

(An iPhone is made by hand by children working for FoxConn Corporation in Shenzhen, China.  I can’t judge. My Tracfone was probably made there, too.)

And so this has moved from Miriam’s song to American heroes to children working 12 hour shifts in China.  So much meandering you probably need a road map.   Not exactly focused writing, but maybe a few morsels of food for thought.

For more information about FoxConn here’s a link http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-3445_162-57367950/the-dark-side-of-shiny-apple-products/