It was one of those perfect afternoons: sunny with a moderate temperature and breeze off Puget Sound. As I stopped off the stairway in front of our office, I had to avoid a small rustling leaf on the sidewalk. Yet it was no ordinary leaf. Stopping and taking a look behind me, I noticed a small hummingbird on its back as the white speckled chest heaved.

Taking a moment to seize up the situation, I felt a momentary twinge of sadness and then started my lunchtime walk. Half a block down the road, I was suddenly asking myself: is this who I am?

Growing up, my grandmother was always a presence in our lives. She taught her family a great many things about how to view the world around us. When Gloria wasn’t painting pastoral landscapes, she was teaching her grandchildren about nature and the small miracles of wildlife around us. She’d identify the various birds that would visit her garden, marvel at the bees, take joy in the small garter snake that would visit her porch every day.

My sister and I would help gently capture birds that accidentally flew into the house, wrest away voles from our dog, and marvel as seals and porpoises would swim around our rowboat. An industrious beaver family lived on the lake my aunt was at, and we explored the body of water for signs of these elusive dam builders.

After an afternoon antiquing session in our nearby town with my sister, mother, and grandmother, we exited the store and prepared to get in the car when one of us noticed a very scared dog tied to a dumpster. She was hungry, whimpering, and the store staff said she was abandoned by her owners: left to her fate. We were strained financially as a family and already had a canine companion, but it was decided that however our position was, this dog needed our help. We gently convinced her to get in the car, and after a vet visit paid for by my grandmother, Lucy the dog was adopted into the family.

When a creature needed our help, we were taught to provide the love and care it needs to either survive in the wild, or adopt it into our household. It’s not always an easy choice, but it was always the right one.

Back at the sidewalk, this animal needed help moving away from where it could be crushed by unwary walkers, and perhaps it had greater needs than that. Sitting on our bottom step and placing my feet around the bird, I started calling our local wildlife rescue center for advice.

Gently covering the hummingbird with a tissue paper to calm it down, I softly nudged a piece of paper under the bird. Weighing no more than a few grams, the bird was easily supported by this lightweight piece of paper. Lifting it into a small box I had prepared, I brought it inside and gave it a chance to recover in our conference room.

Opening the lid of the box, I could see that the bird had righted itself and was calmly sitting in the proto-nest when it suddenly took off and began to hover above our white board while emitting the characteristic flight “chirp” noise that hummingbirds often do. For a few seconds, it looked like it was recovered and ready to go back outside. Then it fairly abruptly begin a descent and landed in disarray.

As it lay on the ground, it lended itself for a closer look. Although the iridescent feathers of the back and neck are the most noticeable feature, the beautiful white/black/brown coloring on the tail revealed the true wonder of these small flyers.

Replying to the voicemail I had left at PAWS, they requested that I bring in this bird to their rescue center 15 minutes away. With the help of a co-worker, we were on our way to drop the hummingbird off with the people who were going to give it the care and attention it needed.

The next time you see an animal, take a moment to appreciate it for what it is and the contributions it brings to our Earth. Do not disparage the raccoon, the pigeon, or the crow, but instead recognize them as unique species that are adapting to the world around them. If you’re looking for a pet, look at your local shelters for animals in need of a loving home. Rescue that spider from your sink and place it outside instead of just batting it down the drain. Try to reduce how much meat you consume, and eliminate it entirely if you can.

We can’t solve all of humanity’s ills in a day, but if there’s one thing I’ve learned from my family, it’s that little acts of kindness towards nature can make the world a better—and more diverse—place to live in.

A few summers ago I was trawling through the bedroom where I grew up and trying to clear out and recycle a lot of the magazines, brochures, and pamphlets that I had collected while growing up. Not to dwell on the subject, but I collected a lot of completely worthless pamphlets. Let’s take a look at some of the more interesting items that I found!

The December 1988 National Geographic cover is certainly an eye-catching one: a hologram spans the entire cover from back-to-front. The Earth spins as the cover is tilted, and the title, “Can Man Save this Fragile Earth?” makes a plea to the problems facing our world.

Haha but of course the back cover is a McDonalds ad featuring some faux “None of us is as good as all of us” platitudes while trying to sell as much mass-produced pseudo food as possible. Try harder everyone.

In kindergarten we all made paste-assisted paper sunhats for reasons long since forgotten in the mists of time. Mine was resting on an upper shelf in my closet and it still (almost) fit!

Halley’s Comet was just a few years before my time, and although the 1990s featured the outstanding appearance of Hale-Bopp, I had a lot of collected educational materials from Halley’s approach. This activity book was nothing special, but it had some outstanding 1980s graphic design of a stylized comet.

Nikky was a pretty great Recess Buddy, who worked very hard to be a safe and careful friend on the playground. Check out all of those stars!

No trip to elementary school is complete without a diorama. Based on The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe, mine had a lot of green arrows pointing to the seeing hole JUST IN CASE someone missed it. Not to mention the “Look in the Hole” caption in the side of the box and the not-quite-rectangle cutout in the box. Clearly this was a masterpiece of the highest order.

Did I even read the the book? The box is painted white with trees that are absent of snow, and the SUN IS SHINING in the arctic Narnia landscape. The trees aren’t even part of the effect! Just the lamppost is! Nikky clearly wasn’t trying very hard.

What is this? A giant sign? You’re HALF correct: notice the pink color scheme and heart above my name. It’s a Valentines Day card collector! The theory is that the larger card the better to hold all of the letters I’d be receiving. Results were inconclusive.

Throughout my childhood my sister and I received subscriptions of literary magazines appropriate for our age group from our grandmother. I’d like to think these gifts spawned a lifelong love of reading, and starting out with Ladybug, the magazines grew up with me. Spider was next, and then Cricket. Capping out the teen years was Cicada, and many of the lessons from these stories still resonate with me today.

When I wasn’t busy reading magazines, I was writing to various government entities to get free pamphlets mailed to me. These were occasionally considered fairly awesome, such as the “Atoms to Electricity” publication from November 1987 and published by the U.S. Department of Energy. I suspect by the mid-1990s they were just happy to get these 8 year old publications off of their hands, and I was happy to file them away.

For a few brief shining issues, there was a newspaper in our 3rd grade classroom. This is a work of art.

The  title of the newspaper is outstandingly long: “The Sun of Debbies Classroom.” We clearly put around 14 seconds of thought into what we’d name it before shipping it out to the public at large.

Clipart game was strong with our newspaper. With our Apple ImageWriter II printer, we were ready to spread the good word with all of the color we could muster. The future was now, and we were seizing it with all of our little hearts.

Once the reader got to the body of the paper, it read more like a letter from the editor rather than a proper article. We decided that using capital letters at the beginning of sentences was for suckers, and viewed spaces after periods with disdain. After pronouncing that we “don’t have any stories today,” a short story soon followed with the breaking news that Orcas were seen in Kitsap County.

A few students were quoted in a man-on-the-street style before the author poignantly notes that “we all would have liked to go.” 3rd graders we may have been, we still felt the twinges of inequality even at our young ages, and didn’t like what we saw.

Wrapping the issue up, we had some news that we DID INDEED have a substitute for our teacher on Tuesday. Just in case anyone needed that clearing up.

A collection of trophies slowly collects dust as they bear silence witness to my dual-sport years of elementary school. Since I largely was unable to hit baseballs with any sort of regularity, most of my athletic efforts were spent on soccer. In 1994 I managed to win “Best Defensive Player” on the team, and if my memory is correct, this was because I was the only person on the team who decided to hang back by the goal in case the other team tried to score.

Ever the sucker for unused cards, I got my hands on some delightfully 1990s-themed 60th Birthday Party cards and promptly decided that you should come to my birthday! Not only was I off by a few decades, I also decided that I couldn’t wait until my actual birthday. The place? “<intelligible>” before it ends with an ominous “COME.”

Thanks for going on this journey with me. My next scheduled blog post will be in 2024.

Trawling through a stack of floppy disks from around 2000, these five lost gems have been located.

Mr. Meanbottom and the assalt of the 1MHz computer, a thriller of a short story.

nikkys story about mr. meanbottom and the assalt of the 1 MHz computer

Life before we knew what photoshop was. Featuring me from 5th grade.

Nikku, picture

Back before we knew that Power Points shouldn’t actually have entire paragraphs on each slide to be read verbatim.

Bright Shark

A complete authoritative history of our classroom

debbies classroom

Antifreeze: is it bad for you or the Earth? Probably! But it’s also useful.

science_report

Rushing through the commons of middle school as a newly minted eight grader, a friend suddenly rushed up to me and–slightly out of breath–said something akin to “NIKKYITHINKSOMETHINGHITTHETWINTOWERSINNEWYORKIHEARDITONMYALARMCLOCKDIDYOUHEARABOUTIT.” Squinting my eyes, my reaction was bewilderment: I hadn’t heard of anything significant and suspected he had wildly misheard whatever was actually happening.

More than anything else, this interruption messed up the tight timing I had to get to class. I was taking math classes at the next door high school, and while middle school started at 07:40, math started at 07:30. Hustling to class, I entered only to find all of the 10th graders inside staring at the small television. The time must have been around 07:27  PST–I had only sat down when the North Tower collapsed.

The next ninety minutes of class consisted of absorbing what we were watching. The teacher was just in the dark as we were about the circumstances of the events unfolding, and discussion mostly consisted of a few older students professing opinions–correct, as it turned out–that bin Laden was one of the likely suspects.

Back at middle school, our teachers did their best to give us as much background information as they could: we were eight graders who were just starting to absorb the idea that the United States existed in a very complicated world. Prevailing emotions were those of shock and anger: our teachers were upset that our nation were attacked, and in one particular discussion I remember my English teacher was unable to keep their “don’t swear in front of students” filter working. This is when I belatedly realized that we were really experiencing an extraordinary event when even the adults around us were starting to act in unusual manner.

9/11 happened on a Tuesday–soccer practice day. Only around half of the team showed up, but for those that did, their entire family came. While we ran through some light drills, all of the parents were deep in discussion. The general consensus was that we would find whoever was responsible and bomb the entire country until it turned into glass. At the time this seemed like a very reasonable reaction and I didn’t have any sort of worldview to even consider alternative options.

Life slowly returned to normal in our small chunk of the Pacific Northwest. With more flags.

In early March 2017 there was an event where the public could walk through the Battery Street Tunnel, which is a 960m 4 lane cut and cover tunnel that carries State Route 99 traffic. Slated to be decommissioned and filled in once the new tunnel is complete, it was a rare opportunity to explore this aging piece of infrastructure on foot that is normally off limits to anything that doesn’t have wheels.

Thermos of coffee in hands, we walked down to the tunnel for an early morning stroll.

There was a striking difference of light when looking back at the entry versus facing forward: we figured out that the lights were recessed to be invisible to the direction of traffic.

Signs of aging were visible in the tunnel: the walls were chipped, the ventilation fans were slowly being covered in rusty dust, and various types of mold seemed be growing on the walls.

More Pictures

As always, the full album can be viewed on Flickr.

You can spot my hair, blue vest, and black/white backpack in the center-right of this photo in the SeattlePI.