Let’s Go Under the Limb, Bough, Bark

By Christopher  Parker

My name is Neta-wata-wes, which in Leni Lenape means Skilled Advisor.  Most of my friends call me Netta.  I will tell you a story about falling leaves and branches.

In the color of a tart gourd the leaves of oaks talk to the sky, smiling and bitter.  Bright enough to be as yellow as a deer fat candle at sundown the hands of the tree still regret their end to a summer of water, humidity, warmth.  Woodpeckers took their pets, the larvae of the bark, this summer season.  Still there was green in the tree's hands like a "how" to a friend you see once a year, near the water, canoe coming towards you like a pointing finger that says here is your gift of friendship share it, for now, because things change.  And now they do change.  My visiting summer buddy canoes back to the knolls in the fall and we smile and cry all in the same color of the face.

Like terra cotta or a blushing daughter, the maple leaves also weep their passing.  But they shout louder in tone than a sassafras tree's music of colors.  The maple are not angry.  They celebrate the last few moons of the festival, crimson sky on the rim of the horizon as the sun sleeps, urgent fire ants running on errands down the bark just like falling leaves from these trees!

Falling.  It seems things return to their roots when there is less day.  The leaves come to their brother soil when the air is cool, earth holding heat like a rock near the campfire the next morning.  This is why even branches march from the shoulders of trunks, why they lie near their mother, like the cheek of the baby on the breast.  As well, it is that they cheer for what they have had, many summers. They leave you with a memory, a souvenir, of their part in your life.  A souvenir even if you did not know you looked at the downed branch.  

Here’s when the branch could have been with you.

When you counted stars, that dark charcoal line you traced in your eye to find the North Star was the now fallen branch! 

When the robin pardoned your sin of trying to catch it by moving up one branch! 

When you needed to take a breath, rushing home to sing your part near the fire, the branch carried the leaves that put air in your mouth! 

So this is the reason for all the falling in the fall.  What's more, there is your reaction to fallen  sticks.   The time and placement of the falling leaves and branches is as scheduled as autumn. 

Hear this:  You run through the woods.  A friend tries to find you.  She is darting in the shrubs like a chipmunk.  You squat beneath the berries, hear her feet crushing moss like a pillow against your ear.  So you leap and traipse through the opening.  Choose your options.  Then dart to the path.  There, where the run is coming to you easier, you see ground rise to your eyes like fast baking bread.  It is you that has collapsed, tongue licking a bowl of dirt, grass in your nose like a backwards sneeze. 

Why all these things?  At your stubbed big toe is a branch!  How could you not have seen it?  Well, it fell to remind you of its glorious part in your life, on the tree.  Insignificant as dust it wants to tell you it has been a part of you.  So it drops you its memo. 

Well my summer friend canoed away the same day; the annoying autumn wind against her, not stopping her.  I was tired just watching the forearms lift and drop the paddle, her body shrinking like the pebble you tossed from a moccasin.

That night I sat on our log near the fire feeling my friend's summer voice beneath me.  But it was a beetle, thinking of her.  So I rose, to scrape my pants free of the insect and walk a bit.  I slipped.  The beetle, running at such angles, seemed to be having fun watching me fall.  And there, like a mat at the tent entrance, was a collection of autumn leaves I slipped on: maple, oak, spruce and chestnut.  My friend had collected them earlier.  Perhaps she placed them there as a souvenir, like the falling branches, so I would remember her part in my summer life and carry her in my thoughts through the winter, a white opal like frozen bubbles on the chest of mother earth.

Copyright 2013 by Christopher Parker  

What is nature and what is art?

Is art trying to be nature?

What art forms do you hear about or experience in this story?

What makes something art?

Where is the beauty in this story?

What makes something beautiful?

Is it true for everyone?

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WHO GATHERS THINGS?

By Christopher Parker

My name is Marie Humund and I am a grandmother here in Montclair.  I was in Nature Guides many years ago.  And one day I became a friend with another, but different nature guide, a Lenape Indian who lived in my hometown of Lake Hopatcong.  This cold winter is reminding me of a story.  Let me tell it to you, though it begins in the summer.

                  *   *   *

 That summer in 1949 when the CrisCrafts were lofted in the boathouses and the lake sank to its lower levels for repair of the bulkheads, we started building the Scoot. 

Ah, the Scoot, that wooden iceboat we sealed with alkyds before we departed for school in September.  I first read about such transport, the February before, in 48.  A great article with illustrations for completion of this homemade ice sailing skater appeared in dad's Popular Mechanics.  And so not to panic my parents with a girl even thinking about such things, I put the magazine issue if my closet under my winter shoes. 

That year I earned money year-round with baby sitting and gardening.  I sold magazines for school fundraisers where I won prizes or cash.  I saved all the dough in a Marly Daihen savings bank I won by being the only caller to a Marley Daihen big band program on the local radio station WWBA.  I needed an antenna to receive that radio broadcast.  It wasn’t like today with cable, satellite radio and pod casting.    

Engineer, is how I thought of myself at that time.  I even engineered my childhood wealth, always trying for the prizes on cereals, magazines, school and radio or earning it with labor and good customer service. 

There were not as many investment possibilities in those days but when Gwendolyn's dad, our Nature Guides leader, suggested breeding fishing bait, earthworms, as an entrepreneurial project, I dropped in more money than any of the girls, and earned more as a result.  And when times changed, and things were for a while doing better on the lake I sold worms wholesale to local stores, saving retail time for my other jobs.

The Scoot was docked in the boathouse hanging from ropes.  That way I could paint the bottom, under its skates. 

October came and I dressed as a sailor for Halloween.  In the hills around Lake Hopatcong, there were a few houses for trick or treating.  Some boys had the gumption to walk into the Lenape reservation that was up there in the hills.  The Lenape people tended to stay by themselves.  And I do not think that Halloween was in their traditions.  So none of the Lenape children came out that day. 

By early December I could see that the lake was beginning to freeze.  But in the middle of the month, we had some warmer weather, so Lake Hopatcong was water again.

In January, though, the temperature dropped dramatically.  In fact, the whole lake seemed to freeze in one night.  That made black ice.  No bubbles, no snow, no frozen rain or sleet left of the surface because the only weather was very cold air.  

I asked dad if the lake was ready for my iceboat.  “Not yet,” he said.  “It has to be a bit thicker.  So to be safe give it another day.”

So I did.  And without asking I had the boat ready the next day.  Gwen came down to the boathouse to help me.   She had filled a lunch box with sandwiches and hot chocolate for us and we placed it under the bow of the boat, near where our feet would reach.  The idea was to keep our feet warmer near the hot cocoa.  Thinking about a temperature change like that I remembered that ice could melt too, in fact sometimes it would not freeze at all.  Or at least as much as we wanted it too.

“We call the Marine Police to find out where the dangerous areas are,” dad used to say.  “Dangerous because the ice remains thin in some places.”

Dad said that one weak spot was under the River Styx Bridge.  This, because cars traveled over the bridge. 

“A gentle vibration comes down the pilings,” dad would explain.  “These pilings supported the bridge over the water.  The pilings come into the water and rest on the bottom of the lake.  So when cars shake them, the water feels it and does not freeze as well.”

I knew that the water has to be still, to freeze completely to make black ice.

I was getting ready to walk back up to the house to call the Marine Police when Gwen asked, “Where are you going?  You don’t have to ask the police for permission to go out on your boat.  Beside, if you do that your parents may tell you not to go.  Beside, we might get warm weather again.  This could be our only chance to use your wonderful Scoot.”

          So we lowered the boat to the ice, raised its canvas sails and emerged from the boathouse.  The boys next door looked at our boat with open mouths of amazement.  And then the strong breeze took the sails.  Gwen and I were thrown back in our seats, which sunk into holes in the fuselage of the boat. 

Then we adjusted to the acceleration, sat up straight and tried to steer the boat, ducking to mainsail’s boom every time we came about.  That was sailor talk, which meant that the long pole that stretched out the sail had to twirl around as the wind and or our direction changed.

“Wow, we’re going fast,” said Gwen.  “Let’s go near Pirates Cove so we can see if any of our friends are on the ice in the skating area.”

So off towards the cove we sailed.  As we approached I could see that no one was out in this cold weather.  To get completely into Pirates Cove, you have to go under the River Styx Bridge.  And I knew better than to do that.  But the wind had a different opinion.  As the sun rose that morning, the wind changed direction and strength.

“Where are you going?” exclaimed Gwen.  “We can’t go under that bridge.  I don’t see black ice there, I see white ice!”

“No doubt that’s weak ice Gwen,” I said.  “I’ll try to come about.  Duck!”

We both ducked so quickly that the boat tilted, lifting two of the Scoot’s blades off the ice.  For that time, I could not steer.  In a second the bow of the boat struck one of the bridge pilings.  We bounced off out of control.  Then the boat stopped.

“What’s going on now?” asked Gwen.  Then I heard a crack.  We were on weak ice!

“Get off the boat,” I hollered. 

Gwen followed me off.  “Get away from me Gwen!” I said as we scurried feet slipping on white ice. 

“Why? This wasn’t my fault Marie!”

“Don’t take it personally,” I said.   “We need to separate our weight so we don’t put too much pressure on the surface.”

So back on the black ice we watched the sacred Scoot sink its nose under the white ice.   We thought about pulling the boat out.

The Scoot seemed stuck like a boot in a patch of mud, that if you lifted it, would be sucked into the wet muck and your foot would walk back bare.  We thought our whole bodies would go under the water if we tried to get the boat out.  And even though the water was low here, especially this year, we imagined leeches eating our legs.   Of course, there were no leeches in Lake Hopatcong.

Still, we feared pulling the fresh Scoot from its trap in the ice, seemingly sinking its bow spike, like a nose, deeper under the water trying to determine the flavor it detects in the blackness.  Inedible as an Atkins diet, our sandwiches washed themselves in the nose of the wet Scoot growing the outskirts of their rectangle Wonderbread crusts like those toy sponges that grow immensely bigger under water. 

So it was two losses we faced on the lake.  And like Parisians in a Toulouse-Lautrec painting we poised hands on hip, top teeth over bottom lip trying not to slip into the ice crack and confused about what to do.  Our attitudes were sinking too.  Then I thought I heard that "qua-llink-unce" sound you could only hear in black lake ice when someone walks on it about a quarter mile away.

It looked like a mile away but coming across the lake was one of the Lenapes.  These people were the original inhabitants of this Muskanetcong River and Lake Hopatcong.  You could even find arrowheads, strewn around the shoreline now and then.  I knew this person, probably a child, was a Lenape Indian by the way he or she walked: always secure even on black ice or the dark rock on a cliff. The Lenapes knew their walking.  Like gymnasts on parallel bars they poised on all otherwise slippery surfaces.  But a slippery surface is what the whole remaining tribe of Lenapes always seemed to be on, summer, winter, and spring.  They were always a different people, tied to their beliefs and faiths that were seeded in this place thousands of years ago.  And here we were now, for a measly, say two hundred years, filling up their fields and woods and streams with soccer games, summerhouses and drainage ditches.  Still, these are a people to respect for their unity and ways to solve problems. 

Oh, the Scoot sunk slowly, like a penny in a viscous fluid.  Still, down it went. 

"No doubt until all its inner air is spent," I moaned to Gwen.  "Then I'll loose the Scoot, like that teenage boy's pickup truck that he tried to drive across the lake in the winter of 1935.  Did you ever read that in the newspaper clipping in a display at the Lake Hopatcong Museum?  And if memory serves, that was right here too, under the River Styx Bridge!"

"The River Styx, so this is the place you go when you do the wrong thing, that you knew may not work,” Gwen preached to me. 

"Come on Gwen," I said, "I don't need any more ridicule with my boat in its morbid state." 

Just then one of our Wonder breads floated to the surface, still in its wax paper wrap.  I imagined me, the wonder girl, nothing but a wax mannequin in the town museum, with a plague that said "talented business girl and the sunken Scoot, still under the River Styx Bridge with a pick up truck."

 I looked back at the approaching Lenape and could see that it was my friend Netta.  My friend.  Well, at least we had a silent mutual respect since the days I used to see her at our school.  But she left, for a special school that all the Lenapes went to, which was run by the government.

She sure was silent.  I thought perhaps she only spoke Leni Lenape, but that was not true.  Mr. Shingas, my history teacher told us that Netta knew the Hopi language too, and that her great grandmother had been a Hopi, that the family met the Hopis at a big civil rights pow wow in Arizona in the eighteen hundreds.  Not only did she know Hopi, she could speak English very well too.

"Look," I said to Gwen, "Netta is here."

"Oh that weird kid?"  Gwen replied

"Don't say that, Gwen.  She is not weird.  She is very different, from a different culture that has been here longer that our ancestors.  We must be the weird ones here."

"Anyway," said Gwen, "we need help pulling this boat out of the water and maybe she can help."

"Netta can you help us?"  I asked. 

It was years later in high school that I learned about her full name Neta-wata-wes, which in Leni Lenape means Skilled Advisor.  And in fact she was.  So much so that after high school I heard she went onto Massachusetts Institute for Technology and now she is in Arizona helping part of her ancestry make better farms and build better buildings.

Anyway, in her manner, Netta silently said yes to me by lifting her eyes, tilting her head upwards and making a gentle smile.  I felt that she was confident about this job.  That she knew just what to do.

Hands on our shoulders, Netta brought us over to the pilings of the bridge upon which we could stand without danger of falling into the ice.  With a branch she grabbed one of the ropes from the slip, then another, then a third and handed us all a piece of rope.

"But Netta," exclaimed Gwen, "this is the wrong position.  If we pull these ropes we'll pull the boat further into the water!"

Opening those eyes even wider than they were, she told us that there was a trick here.

"What do we have to lose Gwen?"  I asked.  "If you have another idea now's the time.  In the meantime our sandwiches are coming up for air and my beautiful Scoot is skedaddling under the ice."

"OK, but I don't see how this will work."

We pulled the ropes.  There were about nine inches of space left of the bow of the boat before the water cascaded into the holes for seating.  Then it would absorb water fast enough to flick it all under the ice.  As we pulled the nose went in deeper.  First just an inch, and then we got the rhythm right.

"Gwen, do you feel what is happening here?"

"Yes I do."

Netta gave a half smile, looking up from here rope grip for a second.

There was enough air still in the fuselage to float to boat.  And as we pulled the boat further under water, the force worked in our favor and had the boat bounced out, just a bit. 

We let the boat bounce out.  Then when it reached its apogee, its highest point, we pulled it back down under again.  Each time the boat would bounce out faster and further.

"Marie" said Gwen.  "We'll have to be careful not to full the boat down so far the water goes in the seating holes."

"Yes." I gasped yanking the strong cord on my wet mittens, so much so that the pain was difficult on my cold palm.

Netta spoke up for the first time,  "One last pull so the boat travels in a keshkhane."

"I don't understand, Netta," I fearfully uttered.

"Oh, that means swift stream," Netta explained.

So our frozen limbs stressed and inched the rope along.  Then on Netta’s cry "wikwetung!" we released the rope. 

Sure enough the Scoot popped out its ice ditch like a champagne cork on New Year’s Eve.  My iceboat skated to safety.  Then kept on dancing like a hokey puck so that we all ran after the boat, skidding on the ice, laughing and squealing with the joy of victory.

We all pulled the Scoot to the boathouse.  There we suspended the little ship with a block and tackle letting the water that was not yet icicles drop like the tears of personal disappointment.  Perhaps the Scoot felt that way.  We didn’t.  We had a great journey with the iceboat, built a stronger friend ship with Netta.

Gwen and I went up to the house to warm ourselves by the fireplace.  Netta, not a socialite, did not come with us.  As we held our feet by the flame and sipped a warm drink we could see Netta from the bay window walking with the grace, alone on the ice back towards the shore to the hills and then the reservation.

Oh, coincidentally, I didn’t tell you that my name, Marie Humund, sounds like the Lenape words Ma-eh-hu-mund, which means One Who Gathers Things.  This seems a fairly accurate description of me, given my accumulations of money, Scoot equipment and now stories.  So you can call me by that name next time you see me around town: One Who Gathers Things. 

Explore this story for its everyday science.  Consider how important science is in our survival as a human family.  In a community of inquiry consider the some of the following questions:

• What is unethical in the story?
• Why?
• What is our responsibility to science?  To nature?
• What is scientific thinking?
• How are we scientists every day?
• What kind of knowing makes something a science?
• There are simple machines are they a science?
• Is there a simple science?
• How does science interact with nature?  Is science nature?  Do we really know or control a science?
• What responsibilities do we have when we explore science?
• Is science dangerous?  How and why?
• Why do some people seem “better” at science than others?
• Do we have to see, hear, feel, and taste to experiment or observe science?
• Is engineering a science?
• How is nature and engineer?
• What is energy? 
• How do we know when we have or use energy?

Consider the connections between art and science.

• Is there are in this story?
• Is science and art or does it use or require art?
• What kind of documentation do we need to explore science?
• Is are scientific documentation?

Consider cultural truth in science

• Is science universal to all cultures?
• Is science truth?
• Do we lie with science?
• If we have an incorrect hypothesis does our evidence lie?

When would we not be honest about science?

Consider the economy of science.

• Was there and economy of science in this story?
• Is economy a science?
• How is this used in our daily lives?
• Is the economy observable nature?

© 2013 by Christopher Parker

REVENGE OF THE BUTTON FISH

By Christopher Parker

The spring in Lake Hopatcong came into being each year the way the water might have sprung from the springs right under the lake.  You could tell from whence those springs ‘leaked in’ when you swam.  You’d be in water, your skin adjusted to one temperature, and suddenly you’d be in an invisible bowl of colder water, goose-bumps trying to jump right off your skin to get out of the water!  

They were cold springs.  No doubt cold because they came from melted snow.  And they stayed cold from resting underground before they sprung.  It’s always 52 degrees, I hear, three feet under ground.  I wonder if I could hear water under the earth. 

In the summer 52 degrees is cool, in the winter that is warm enough not to freeze.  In the spring the temperature is in-between, like the whole season itself: a changing point.  The spring in Hopatcong was a changing point because it took some time to manifest itself as a pleasant spring.  Yet you could see and, perhaps more importantly, feel things change.  New sprouts in the dirt and on branches; mud sticks to your clothes like a sign that tells secrets about you.

We read in the town weekly paper that there was a spring fishing contest to take place not too far away on the Morris Canal.  The Morris Canal was not the lake but rather a man-dugout line of water that was used to transport big barges.  These barges transported supplies, just like trucks or trains do today.  But these barges were on water.   This allowed donkeys and horses to pull tons and tons of products like stones, metal, glass and food. 

Still, even in my childhood the Morris Canal was no longer an aqueous highway. But it was stocked with fish.  That meant the county people put baby fish in the canal, small-fry, so that they could grow and you could catch them.  Lake Hopatcong had fish too.  But this was the spring fishing contest. 

Uncle Barry had entered us into the contest and took us to the part of the county where the competition was being held.  Even though we didn't catch a fish of merit (everyone else seemed to catch a prizewinner except my brother Jon and I) Uncle Barry encouraged us to keep on fishing at home.  So maybe I wasn't a good fisherwoman. 

I thought I needed another involvement with nature.  So I went into agriculture.  It wasn't too late in the spring to plant a few vegetables.  Dad let me have a patch of dirt in the back yard.  For five cents I bought a pack of tiny radish seeds.  They grew underground.  I liked the idea of that. 

My grandmother visited us from Brooklyn every other week.  Once we went to a flea market and Grandma searched through boxes of junk for the bits of things she could use.  Like buttons.  Grandma collected buttons as if they were gold nuggets, and hoarded them in little jars. But it wasn’t only buttons.  She’d pick up anything, it seemed.  Once in a while you might catch Grandma picking a piece of paper off the ground, or from under the craft table.  She would examine it for a second, fold it up and put it into here purse.  I suppose she thought she might use this piece of paper some day.  Maybe to wrap up some buttons. 

Speaking of buttons, one day, at our dock at home, Uncle Barry caught several sunnies, perch and pickerels.  But before he threw these fish back into the lake he sewed buttons onto their dorsal fins. Plastic diamond buttons, white shirt buttons red buttons; all small enough to be carried by the fish. 

He told us "You can probably catch some of these same fish again.  When you do I'll give a prize of one quarter of a dollar for catching a fish with a button on the fin.  And anyone who catches the blue gill, with a diamond button, will be awarded fifty cents.  Of course, we'll throw each fish back in the lake so they’re up for grabs again!"

            There were ads on television at that time for the Buttoneer®, “an instant, simply-click button tool”.  You placed a button on one of the plastic chords, which looked just like the plastic things that holds a price tag to new clothing. You know that piece of plastic chord with a foot on the end, so you can’t pull it off the clothing without damage.  Then, you trigger the little plastic machine and the button is clipped into place.  It's not as pretty as thread, but it's fast. And that's useful, especially when working with twisting fish.  “Just click and the button is attached,” the commercial sang in my memory.

My friend Netta, (whose real name was based on the Lene Lenape Indian words for Skilled Advisor, or neta-wata-wes) watched Uncle Barry sewing on the fin of a fish.  Netta felt she had to tell him something.

"When you change nature," said Netta, "you have to live with the changes."

"I know," said Uncle Barry, "If button on fish, then win money!"

"That's not what I mean," Netta replied.  "It's like you change a fish and nature seeks a kind of revenge."

"But we throw these fish back," Barry retorted.

"Yes," Netta continued.  "But they are no longer fish, then.  They are button fish."

"Revenge of the button fish?" Uncle Barry questioned slightly sarcastically, tossing a buttoned, flapping blue gill onto the surface of the lake, the sound of it like a smack in the face.  Then the fish was under water again, out of view.

As we watched Uncle Barry sewing buttons onto sunnies Grandma was on the patio near the dock.  She bent down to take something out of the gravel.  As she stood she held her finding up to the sun to examine it.  The light hit the diamond in the small button held between her thumb and forefinger.  Uncle Barry must have dropped it there with all his moving like a cowboy fish herder.

The diamond glittered like a jewel in the sun then sunk into the darkness of Grandma’s black leather purse.  Then she tossed the purse onto her shoulder like a Marine, the black purse hanging from he shoulder like a saddlebag on a Harley.

It took weeks sometimes to catch a button fish.  I suppose Uncle Barry could only sew so many of them, even though he seemed to fish every morning at the lake.  So we were feeling like we did at the county fishing contest, catching nothing of value!

Maybe I did not have the patience for fish but I did have patience for farming and ideas.  And while I waited for bites on my bait I thought. I thought that the only way to identify an award winning fish was with the button sewed on the back.  And here I was catching sunny after sunny and the occasional perch or blue gill.  What if I was to simply take my mom's Buttoneer and click one of Grandma’s buttons onto the fin. 

Well Uncle Barry was off playing golf that morning.  Maybe this was an opportunity to try my . . .idea.  I did not think of this so much as cheating at the time but as inventing something interesting, another part of the game.  

Up in the house on the top of the hill overlooking the lake my brother Jon and I searched through grandmothers sewing box for buttons.  We found a baby food jar filled with white, red, black and even one diamond button.  So down we trod to the dock with bait, buttons and Buttoneer ready to catch and tag our own award winners.  And sure enough we did catch several sunnies -- without buttons.  Then we caught one big blue gill. 

This was the one to sew a button onto, we thought.  I stroked my fingers through Grandmas button jar, like searching through a box of Cracker Jacks for a prize.  I pull out the diamond button! 

"You can't use that one," says Jon, blue gill writhing from the hook on the end of the fishing line, as if it were trying to fly.  "That's one of Grandmas jewel buttons."

"She collects so many buttons she'll never miss it.  Besides a diamond button on a blue gill is worth fifty cents in this game, brother!  So hold onto that fish Jon," I commanded, preparing the Buttoneer for injection.

My brother was afraid to hold the flapping fish in his hands for fear that the fin bones would poke into his fingers.  So Jon pressed his foot gently on the fish, Keds saving his toes from fierce fins.  Then I positioned the button on a plastic chord and tried to trigger our little mechanism.  But even though the fish was held down by rubber soles the fins still wiggled too much to get an accurate aim.

"Hurry up," exclaimed Jon.  "The blue gill is stinking up my new Keds.  Besides the fish can't be out of water this long."

So under pressure I pulled the trigger on the Buttoneer.  It clicked like a lock in a prison door.

"You’ve put the button too close to the back of the fish!" hollered Jon. "Uncle Barry will know this was not one of his fish.  He puts the buttons on the top of the fin."

"Oh well," I said.  "Let's give it a try."

So I threw the fish in a metal bucket filled with water and left the catch on the dock.

Later that day Jon said to me.  "Uncle Barry is taking a long time playing golf.  You think he'd want to come out of the sun."

Jon was right.  It was a long time.   And the sun that day was fierce.  I looked out the window. There was the bucket on the dock.  Sun was glaring off the light gray planks and glimmering on the metal bucket.

"You'd better check on that fish,” Jon suggested.  "He's been in the sun for hours."

So we went down to check.  The fish was sideways in the water; gills still like a soccer ball with no air.

"It's dead," I solemnly reported to Jon.

"You probably killed it the way you put that button on," Jon accused.

"I don't think so," I replied confidently.  "It could have been the sun, no fresh water in the bucket and the age of this blue gill.  Obviously a big one.  And look at the holes in its lip!  This thing has been through years of fish hooks, some that caught, some that did not."  I thought I sounded like a true fisherman.

"Maybe we can still get fifty cents for it?" Jon proposed.

"No, I don’t think so.  We have to be able to throw the fish back in so it’s possible to catch it again," I said.  "Otherwise it is not a winning fish.  That's Uncle Barry's rules."

"Maybe Netta was right," Jon added.  "We changed the fish and it was no longer just a blue gill.  And at its old age it could not handle the change."

"That could be.  No, we do have to get rid of this thing."

I stood up with the bucket.  There, far across the lake, I could see what looked like Netta on her own dock.  She seemed to be looking at us.

I carried the fish to my little radish garden for burial.  Jon troweled a shallow hole in the topsoil.  I tossed the blue gill in, on its side.

"Out of respect, why don't you bury the fish the way it swam, dorsal fin up.  Also, the diamond button can stick out of the dirt and be our little, secret grave stone," suggested Jon.

So we did that, checking on its "progress" amongst the radishes every now and then.

I did not feel the same way about catching Uncle Barry's button fish any more.  It could have been fun.  But now I felt ashamed of what I had done, or tried to do.  Sometimes I threw button fish back in the lake without collecting a quarter.  Sometimes I gave the fish to my little sister, who at three, never seemed to catch anything herself.

Later that summer, deep into August, we were having a big family reunion at the lake.  Grandma was there, Uncle Barry and many other uncles, aunts, and cousins. 

Mom calls Jon from upstairs.  "Jon get up here and clean up your room before everyone comes.  Also, something stinks like dead fish in your closet.  I think it's your Keds.  What were you doing?"

Then, back down in the kitchen, mom was making a salad.  She says, "Marie, are your radishes ready?  I could use them for this salad"

Wow, I thought, my own farm it providing food for the reunion! I was so proud. 

"Yeah, I think they are ripe.  I haven't checked them in a couple of weeks.  But according to the instructions they should be ready."

"OK," said mom, "Grandma likes to pick up things.  I'll send her out for a few radishes."

So out went Grandma to my little farm in the back of the house and to pull out radishes one by one.  She held them up, examined them and tossed the mature ones into her apron pocket.  Grandma was ready to pull up another radish by the stem and leaves when she saw something in the soil.

Oh, a little diamond button, she thought.  I wonder what this is doing here?  Probably fell off a child's sweater.  I'll put it in my jar of repair buttons.

Grandma, placing thumb and forefinger on the button found she was unable to lift it.  So, hands already soiled, palm in humus, she grabs the button wholeheartedly.  She had to pull.  It seemed more difficult than a radish.  So when the button came out of the dirt, Grandma had been pulling so hard she fells over backwards.  There, hanging from her farmer’s hand was one diamond button attached to the decrepit remains of our old blue gill.

From the kitchen mom and I heard a coyote howl that sounded like Grandma. 

"You better go out and check on her," said mom.

Grandma was fine, a bit shocked by her discovery, but fine.  She did not talk to me all that day.  So what could have been a totally great day was just a bit marred by something I had chosen to do several weeks back.  Truly this was, as Uncle Barry said a while ago, the revenge of the button fish.

Questions for Inquiry

Is it ethical for Uncle Barry to sew a button on the fins of the sunfish?

Is it wrong for Maria to do so?

Is there anything else unethical with Maria’s actions?

What wrong things occurred as a result of Maria’s button fish?

Should we contemplate all the possible wrongs resulting from an action?

Are there instances in which we do what we initially thinks id good but which causes problems, loss, difficulties for others?

What categories of ethics were manifested by Maria’s button fish?

Where did the ethical conflicts begin?

            Was it at the very thought of Maria making her own button fish?

            Were her thoughts ethical?

Where did Maria’s ethical failures end?

Where did they go despite her?

What was Maria not ethically responsible for?  To what percentage was she responsible?

Was Netta ethical?  Did Netta undertake all necessary ethical actions?

Was Maria responsible for anyone else’s ethical failings?

Is it our ethical responsibility to think of these ramifications?

What is the ecology of the fish, of Uncle Barry, of grandma?

What is our responsibility to the ecology?

How does one thing effect another?

Is that science?

 Copyright 2013 by Christopher Parker