As a follow-up to last week’s piece on ci”¢ca”¢das, here’s an excerpt from a Washington Post piece that Tom W. shared with me.
Every time the cicadas return, the human calendar has accelerated. When they were here in 2004, there were no iPhones and only about 24 percent of American adults had broadband at home. On their previous visit, in 1987, the top-selling music storage system was the cassette tape.
But as we’ve seen in recent years, a balanced, healthy mind cannot live on acceleration alone. There is such a thing as too much stimulation and too much focus on the events of the past day, the past hour, the past minute.
Slow down, the cicadas sing to us; look at the world through a longer lens. I know not where they come from, but the message is a godsend.
– The Cicadas are a Godsend, Washington Post
I don’t have a subscription so I can’t link to the source article, but the title is shown at the end.
Herbivorous, not homopterous, but we work with what we have.
Sigh. Stop and hear the bugs sing.
Will we get them here to hear — even up on the 22nd floor?
Barbara – Sadly, I don’t think we get cicadas here. I wonder what would happen if we dug some up and replanted them here. Would they settle in or wiggle their way back to their rightful habitat? The things we don’t learn in school.