My new book volume II, leans more into what it takes to try many different things. I try to show the kind of effort it takes to see how good you are at something and how important it is to give your best effort, or you will never know.

If you find you’re not good at something, it’s alright, you have learned something. That’s the only way for you to find what you’re good at. I’ve tried many things. I gave each one my very best effort. I was never the best at any of them, but with enough effort, could generally be pretty good. When I got good at something, this was the signal for me to try something new. I was proud of my accomplishment and moved on before I got complacent, to a different skill to learn. When you are doing something that is simple for you to do, you’re not learning anything.

My new book, volume II, is based on that premise.  My parents, when I was very young, taught me a lesson that I didn’t realize until I was an adult. I wondered where I got this idea that, “The world is a classroom. All you have to do is be a good student to get a good education.”

My parents were poor and never thought I would be able to go to college, so they taught me, as I grew up, how they had learned. I was constantly asked, almost every day, “What did you learn today?” Then we would discuss whatever I came up with. Many days I didn’t know what I learned until my mother started asking questions about what I had done. I realized all the little things I had not paid any attention to which had something to teach me.

Well here I am, 85 years old and still learning from the world around me, every day. A good example is what I learned from the birds of Indio, Ca.  I want to pass on a little important lesson I learned from them.

I was sitting at the table on my small patio of the second floor where my lady-friend, Karin, and I were staying.  It is one of my time shares. We like feeding the birds, so I buy bird seed and put it in a plate on the patio wherever we’re staying. On this trip I took an aluminum pie plate to feed the birds in. It was shiny, something the birds had never seen before.

I filled it with food and the birds came onto the railing and looked down at it. Some came down and walked to within a foot or so from the plate, then flew away. They kept coming back but just couldn’t bring themselves to get in the plate and eat. They were afraid. The shiny pie pan was an unknown to them. None of them were brave enough to see what it was, even though they really wanted the food in it.

Karin and I talked about it. How very much like humans they were.

How many times have you wanted something in your life, that was there, but you were too timid for some reason to do it or to take it? The birds were missing out on a fine meal of high-quality bird food, because they were frightened of the unknown.

I can only hope that the next time I encounter a situation where I feel uncomfortable, inadequate, or for any other reason, consider passing up a good thing, I will remember the birds of Indio and just go for it.

Like everyone else I have been stuck at home for weeks now and have had a lot of time to just think. How has this new normal affected me? It is interesting the mood swings I have gone through. At first, I thought it was no big deal, just an inconvenience for a while.

I was in Alabama visiting my family when it all started the first week in March. Everything shut down so fast that I wasn’t sure I was going to get home. On my flights home there were only eight people on the first flight, Birmingham to Houston; only 35 on a big plane from Houston to Orange County. That is when I realized this was a bigger deal than I had first thought.

When I got home, Karin made me go directly to the shower and put all my clothes in the washing machine before I could give her a hug. That’s when I wondered, (I am a wonderer), what the hell is going on? I had not been watching TV at all.

Now many weeks into what’s going on, I’m still not sure. I have been basically on lockdown – house bound. All my reservations for March, April, May, and June were canceled by the resorts where I was booked for two weeks each month.

I didn’t get angry, as a biologist I understood the problem. The media has scared the bejesus out of everybody. We are not all going to die. Knowing what we know now about the problem we could open the entire country up if all the population would just follow the rules established to prevent the spread of the virus. They work!

I watch the protesters, not wearing masks, mobbed all together, carrying their signs to open things up, and I can’t help thinking, how stupid can these people be? They are involved in an activity that prolongs what they are protesting. Are they really that ignorant or do they just not give a poopoo for anyone but themselves?

Through the frustration that I have felt as time passes there are some good thing that have entered my life because of this chaos. I have watched a pair of Nuthatch birds build a nest in my patio, I work out every day instead of three days a week, and I have time to enjoy the flowers that are in my green-belt where the rabbits and squirrels live. If you are old enough to remember the children’s story of Ferdinand the Bull that wouldn’t fight in the ring because all he wanted to do was smell the flowers. That’s what I’ve become. I have learned to Hang Loose.

It is amazing how some things that seemed important in my life have become unimportant, and things that were important to me as a young person have reentered my life. For example, I no longer care much about what’s going on in the sports world but want to be more tuned in to what everyone in my family is doing. My family has become the rock in my life, again, like it was when I was growing up. I feel I don’t need all the other stuff that has surrounded me as an adult. Is that good, or bad? I don’t know, perhaps, time will tell.