Some comment responses

Collembola are also known as springtails. Their main role in the soil is as detritivores - they eat decomposing plant matter. So I suppose you could say their purpose is to help return nutrients to the soil. I'm not sure what eats springtails, but I suppose SOMETHING does.

I did several other samples after the one with all the springtails but didn't find as many in any other sample. I'm wondering if the enormous number of small springtails I found suggested that there had been a "hatch" in that first sample. I don't know if springtails lay eggs - I assume they do, I don't know of any truly viviparous insects.

I'm guessing the high abundance is due to the mild winter and the fairly wet spring we had. Also, it was wetter than the past few times I've sampled, which probably leads to more stuff being close to the surface.

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I think I use a lot of parenthetical statements because it is kind of how I think. And this is one of the rare occasions where I can just sit down and write the same way I think. When I write journal articles and stuff I have to cut out the more idiosyncratic bits of writing, and my style is very different. I also tend to speak in parentheses, which I know annoys some people because I tend to jump between subjects or return to something I spoke about before without warning. Sometimes I think my brain maybe moves a little too fast and is maybe a little too disorganized.

Now I'm gonna be all self-conscious about it, though.

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I start a new Youth program tonight. It's on "conflict," and dealing with conflict as a Christian. (I'm guessing "turn the other cheek" is not always the best strategy, though it's close to what I use....which is "walk away from ugly conflict"). The first video in the series is about conflict with parents and....one of the stories is pretty intense. I'm wondering how the students will react to it. It's about a guy who openly states he was "addicted" to gaming and wouldn't study or go to church or do chores, and one day he just snapped at his mom and got her in a headlock (!) and screamed at her that he wished she would just die. The even worse part of this is that this apparently happened not long after HER parents had died. I admit that the segment shocked me. I know I said hurtful things to my parents as a teen but I never got physical about it. (The boy profiled also said he had "thrown stuff" in the past)

The point the "expert" on the video makes after it is that selfishness can cause us to act in ways that we might not otherwise. He also used the "magic phrase" that I use a lot these days: "It's not about you." I think I'll spend some time discussing that because there are so many aspects to it:

1. Not taking stuff personally, knowing that sometimes when someone says something to you that sounds hurtful, it's because they're hurting themselves and they don't really mean it.

2. There are bigger things in the world than your own wants or your own feelings.

3. The world doesn't revolve around you; other people matter also.

I'm going to see how many interpretations of "It's not about you" the students can come up with.

I think what I'm going to do is show these bit by bit, first stopping after the presentation of the gamer kid, and try to get some discussion about "what are the problems here?" and "what would be a more appropriate way to react?" and then show the little summing-up by the "expert." Depending on if I can get discussion going, I might only do the first of the three segments tonight.

I hope I can get discussion going. That's the hardest part. It may not be that it's ME, it may just be the students I have are shy and not big on talking. I don't know.

Still, I admit: it's tough doing Wednesday night youth group after a busy day teaching and stuff. On the one hand, we have better attendance (at least among the little kids) than we did on Sunday nights, and it's kind of nice to have Sunday evening off. But it does make Wednesdays feel very long.