Mariposa

This monarch butterfly (Danaus plexippus) fluttered amongst the milkweed plants (Asclelias syriaca) when we just stood there and watched, but she decided to hide in the middle of this Russian-olive tree (Elaeagnus augutifolia) - which isn't an olive at all - when I decided to photograph her. She came back after I put the camera away. The sole food source for monarch butterflies are milkweed foliage. The milkweed's sap renders monarch larvae and adults poisonous to birds, which is why this one flutters about freely in a songbird environment. I don't know why she was so camera shy, however. In a few more weeks, she'll be on her way to Mexico, to meet up with a couple of her relatives and friends. These green leaves will begin to turn yellow and fall from the tree and the winds will pick up. It may become too cold to spend very much time at the beach, as we did these past days. Here in the gathering months of late summer, the monarch still feeds and the leaves still hold their green. Everything is about energy now, gathering it in roots and in stomachs and in fat and in wood.

On the Gaza Strip the Israeli military flushed out dissenting settlers from synagogues this morning, which, for all of my support of the Palestinian cause, seemed unnecessarily over the top. It is difficult not to sympathize with any minority subject to the overwhelming force of a modern military. In Iraq, more deaths too. It is a hard future we have been handed and it seems foolish to forget that we cannot control it, merely leave a record of actions. How much of your money is spent on the global war-machine? What if we spent as much on education? True, real, effective education? What if we could migrate within our own ecosystems with the same grace as the monarch butterfly?