April is National Garden Month, packed with garden tours and garden shows, and it’s almost all about flowers. But 35% of U.S. households grow vegetables, fruits and, “other food”—whatever other might mean. I was pleased to find these great garden statistics at Ruby Home and Cooped Up Life. (Please note: garden plants can be poison!)
Who Gardens?
Gardening by Gender:
Male 52.5%
Female 47.5%
Gardening by Age: More than half of all gardeners are under forty-five.
Ages 29-34 (millennials) – 29%
Ages 35-44 – 35%
Other – 36%
Gardening by Marital Status: Married people are by far more likely to garden.
Married – 71.6%
Single – 11.6%
Widowed – 6.8%
Divorced – 5.6%
Other – 4.5%
Gardening by Income: The 2021 national median annual income was $79.9K, but here’s the breakdown among gardeners.
$100K and higher – 34.1%
$75-$99K – 20.5%
$50-$74K – 2.6%
$25-$49K – 17.1%
$25K and lower – 5.8%
(And I don’t know why the total is less than 100%!)
Gardening by Education Level:
I was surprised that 79% of people who garden attended college or are college graduates.
Balcony Garden
Gardening by Dwelling:
91% of people who garden live in a single-family dwelling and garden in their backyards
2 million (5%) – grow food at neighbors, family or friends
Some homeowners as well as apartment dwellers—1 million (3%) – grow food in a community garden, aka urban farms.
Only 1% grow food at other (unknown) locations. That 1% is still significant. Condominium or apartment owners and renters often grow herbs indoors, on window sills or with the help of grow lights. Plants grown in containers or hanging pots on patio or balcony, and rooftop gardening are becoming more popular options.
Terraced Roof Garden, Fukuoka, Japan
Why Garden?
Overall, 55% of U.S. households (71.5 million households) garden. Of those who garden, 55% garden primarily to create a beautiful space, and 43% garden primarily to grow food.
Growing Activity
Percent of Gardeners
Flowers
72.90%
Vegetables
51.40%
House plants
47.00%
Shrubs
43.70%
Ornamental/perennials
38.20%
Fruit trees
18.80%
Clearly, gardeners often garden in more than one way! But growing food (fruits, vegetables, berries, and others) has been the fastest-growing gardening category in the past five years.
According to the National Gardening Association, 35% of U.S. households, or 42 million households total, grew vegetables, fruits, and other foods in 2021, an increase of 6 million from five years prior. Having 1 in every 3 American households growing food is a massive 200% increase since 2008. Most of the growth came from millennials and families with children.
The average U.S. garden is 600 sq.ft. but the median garden is 96 square feet (12 feet X 8 feet). In other words, 50% of the U.S. gardens are 96 square feet or smaller.
Garden Size
Hours/Week
People Fed/Year
100-199 sq.ft.
0.5-1 hr
1 person
200-399 sq.ft.
1-2 hrs
1-4 people
400-799 sq.ft.
3-5 hrs
2-6 people
800-1499 sq.ft.
4-6 hrs
4-8 people
1,500-2,000 sq.ft.
6-8 hrs
6-10 people
Community Gardens
Kaylin Mrbral grows produce with StreetScapes, an organization in South Africa that creates urban gardens as a method of creating work for those living on the streets, providing food for people facing food insecurity, and beautifying the urban landscape.
Humans have worked together as communities to grow food since our very early ancestors first started experimenting with agriculture. People in small groups grazed animals or raised food plants on communally-held land. Even when humans began to divide up land and consider property to be a privately-held commodity, groups of people still worked together to perform tasks that were very labor intensive or time-sensitive, such as harvesting crops.
Community Garden in South Beach, Miami
In the US, community gardens started to regain popularity in the 18th century. Moravians created a community garden for Bethabara, Winston-Salem, in North Carolina to encourage families to come together and grow their crops on shared land. Since 2012, the number of community gardens has increased 44%. Today there are 29,000 community gardens in the 100 largest U.S. cities.
Community gardens play an important role in addressing food insecurity and food deserts in urban areas. According to the USDA, approximately 13.5 million people in the US live in an area with little to no access to grocery story or supermarket; some researchers put the estimate as high as 19 million. In such areas, community gardens provide residents with critical access to fresh produce as well as simply having more food in general.
School Garden
Community gardens in schools or on school grounds provide even more benefits. In addition to improving students’ diets and the quality of school lunches, these gardens provide students with hands-on lessons about biology, plant life cycles, nutrition, and patience. Children who garden regularly come into contact with beneficial soil microbes that improve their immune systems. They also practice self-regulation, experimental mindsets, empathy, and observational skills. When students grow food in a school garden, research suggests that the entire neighborhood benefits from cross-generational learning, community involvement, and better health.
Why Grow Food?
Because the average garden produces $600 worth of food, and the average return on investment is enormous: it was 757% in 2021. Even a small food garden of 100-200 sq.ft. can feed one person year-round.
Within the food category, growing vegetables was the most popular trend. And what are the most popular vegetable to grower?
Vegetables by Percentage of Gardens
Tomatoes 86%
Cucumbers 47%
Sweet peppers 46%
Beans 39%
Carrots 34%
Summer squash 32%
Onions 32%
Hot peppers 31%
Lettuce 28%
Peas 24%
Food gardening is pretty evenly distributed across regions of the U.S. This somewhat even distribution per region demonstrates people’s willingness to garden no matter where they are – in Florida, where the growing season is year-round, or New York, where gardening is limited to just five months a year due to the weather conditions.
South 29%
Midwest 26%
West 23%
Northeast 22%
Sustainable Gardening Instruction at the University of Hawaii
Other Benefits of Gardening
But what if you don’t need to garden to put food on the table?
Of the entire U.S. population who grow vegetables, 25% do so because it tastes better, and they prefer their products to be as fresh as possible. A lot of produce has a higher nutrituonal content when eaten shortly after being harvested than when it sits in transit and on store shelves for days or weeks before being eaten.
And if you are fine with supermarket taste and freshness? Do it for your health and well-being! As an exercise, gardening is comparable to biking, walking, or jogging. Gardening activities, such as pulling weeds, strengthen cardiovascular health and increase muscle tone and dexterity.
Additionally, multiple scientific studies linked gardening to emotional well-being and an increased sense of accomplishment and happiness. Here are some of the key findings from research studies by UNC Health and Princeton University:
Gardening fosters self-esteem and a sense of accomplishment.
Gardening relieves stress, anxiety, and depression.
Gardening increases the level of vitamin D, vital for the normal functioning of the immune system.
Gardening increases the level of serotonin, a brain chemical responsible for the feeling of happiness.
During WWII, many Americans grew food in Victory Gardens as part of the war effort.
Gardens of any sort are good for the environment! Plants act as highly effective air cleaners, absorbing carbon dioxide, plus many air pollutants, while releasing clean oxygen and fragrance. Also, a dense cover of plants and mulch holds soil in place, reducing erosion and keeping sediment out of streams, storm drains, and roads. Gardens create an ecosystem for birds and insects. Increasingly, gardeners choose plants and locations with an eye to incorporating native species, attracting pollinators, or reducing watering cost.
Bottom line: Gardening is good for what ails you—and if nothing is ailing you, it’s good for you anyway!
Claude Monet in the garden at Giverny, an inspiration for many of his paintings.
Married couples on television almost always include a taller, overweight, poorly groomed husband and a shorter, slimmer, more stylish wife.
Overall, husbands in heterosexual marriages tend to be older, taller, better educated, and financially better off than their wives. This is the mating gradient: in mate selection, women marry up and men marry down. This pattern is socially and culturally approved to such an extent that often this configuration is perceived as what mates “should” be.
Anti-suffragist political cartoons often played on this perception by depicting caricatures of female voters who were physically larger and more prosperous than their husbands.
What Women (and Men) Want
Sometimes it helps to lower expectations
Traditionally, members of couples are similar in age, race, class, appearance, and education. But within that common background, men tend to marry women slightly below themselves, per the marriage gradient discussed above. To determine the extent to which students were comfortable with unequal relationships, and with traditional and untraditional inequalities, 277 predominantly white, middle and upper middle class students (140 male, 137 female), between the ages of 18-23, completed an attitude questionnaire. Two hypothetical situations were presented, one in which the “spouse” was older, taller, more intelligent and richer, and a second scenario in which the “spouse” was younger, shorter, less intelligent, etc. Students rated their degree of comfort with each hypothetical spouse on a Likert-type scale and then explained their ratings. An analysis of the results showed that students were most comfortable with the traditional inequalities of the mating gradient. College men wanted women who were shorter and better looking than themselves; however, they also wanted similarity in earnings, intelligence, age, and education. Women wanted spouses who earned more, were older, better educated, and taller. (V. P. Makosky and B. K. Sholley, 1983)
When I conducted that research forty years ago, I thought that the mating gradient would be less powerful than it had been in the 1950s—but it wasn’t. And as best I can determine, it’s alive and well today.
Some maintain that the mating gradient is derived from biology: men are attracted to women who can bear their children, and women are attracted to men who can provide for them and their children.
Historically, the husband’s status determined the family’s status. And family wealth often passed to male heirs. Primogeniture laws in England required that noble titles (and sometimes estates) could only pass to male heirs, a state of affairs that caused great consternation for the Bennet sisters in Pride and Prejudice.
Though extreme, these two online dating profiles illustrate the mating gradient. The man on the left has included attributes he requires in a mate; the woman on the right has included things she will not accept in a mate.
The growing popularity of online dating has reflected the continuation of these trends. Researchers have demonstrated that, although everyone (53% of US respondents and 44% of British respondents) seems to lie on the their dating profiles, men and women lie about different things. Women often list their age as younger, often going so far as to post heavily manipulated photos or photos of themselves when they were younger. Men are more likely to present themselves as taller, better educated, and wealthier than reality. Everyone lies about their weight or level of physical fitness.
Effects on Women
So, it may seem that women gain greater benefits from marriage than men do. But do they really?
An article in a 1938 issue of Parade offered women tips for convincing a man to propose marriage, mostly centered around being meek and mysterious.
This prescribed pattern for husbands and wives carries profound implications at a societal level. For example, higher status females have difficultly finding males of even higher status and lower status males have difficulty finding females of even lower status, as deemed suitable by the mating gradient. Times are changing, but it is still the case that the “best” women at the top of the gradient are likely to produce fewer children.
The actor Leonardo DiCaprio is notorious (and widely mocked) for dating women increasingly younger than himself. Perhaps the availability index no longer applies to multi-millionaire movie stars. (image by Sarah Lerner)
Although changes in fertility and in mortality are contributing factors, the ubiquitous norm that husbands should be older than their wives is paramount. This mating gradient is the most significant determinant of the competition for mates as it is experienced by older unmarried women compared with older unmarried men. Some app creators have capitalized on this state by marketing online dating apps specifically tailored to older people.
Jean E. Veevers created “availability indices” to estimate the number of unmarried persons of the opposite sex potentially available for every 100 unmarried persons. For men, availability indices are low in the 20s, and they increase with advancing age to about one-to-one in their 50s. For women, access to potential grooms is highest in the 20s and decreases with advancing age until, in their 50s, there are only 50 potential grooms per 100 unmarried women. (The “Real” Marriage Squeeze: Mate Selection, Mortality, and the Mating Gradient, Jean E. Veevers, University of Victoria.)
Effects on Society
Where does ketchup fall on the mating gradient?
Consider the implications for women’s mental health of always being the lesser partner. Who makes decisions for the family? Whose job/work/profession takes precedence? Who has the power? At least historically, some states had laws concerning the right of domicile, such that if a wife refused to relocate with her husband, he could divorce her on grounds of desertion.
Consider the implications for men. How can a man respect his wife? Can he trust her to problem solve? To handle finances, car repair, etc., as he ages? What happens to that dynamic in the face of developing illness or disability?
Women have a significantly higher frequency of depression and anxiety in adulthood, while men have a higher prevalence of substance use disorders and antisocial behaviors. In my opinion, the roles that accompany the mating gradient contribute to these mental heath issues.
Women are more likely to internalize emotions, which typically results in withdrawal, loneliness, and depression. Men are more likely to externalize emotions, leading to aggressive, impulsive, coercive, and non-compliant behavior.
Gender inequality has a significant impact on mental health for men and women. Women and persons of marginalized genders exhibit higher levels of stress, anxiety, depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder.
Bottom Line: In my opinion, each partner should be “superior” on some but not all of the mating gradient factors.
I’m not talking crazy or aberrant or clownish. No, I’m talking about the paranormal, events or phenomena that are beyond the scope of normal scientific understanding.
Storytellers have always been fascinated by characters with superhuman abilities. Throughout human history, such paranormal abilities have appeared in nearly every culture in the world. They are sometimes attributed to historical figures and sometimes relegated to mythical figures (though history and myth often overlap).
Mind Over Matter
Telekinesis or psychokinesis is the (supposed, or hypothetical) psychic ability to move objects at a distance by mental power or other nonphysical means. A 2006 survey of American adults found that 28% of male and 31% of female respondents believe in the possibility of telekinesis. (WikiHow offers a 14 step guide to developing your own telekinetic abilities here!)
Rama, avatar of Vishnu, in battle against Ravana
In ancient myths, characters often had paranormal control over elements of the natural world (such as storms or animals) rather than direct control of materials. There are a few notable exceptions. The Norse god Thor and the Greek hero Perseus controlled their weapons through limited telekinesis. Thor could make his hammer Mjölnir fly around, entirely independent of gravity. Perseus was able to make his sword fly further and more accurately than he could throw it to strike Medusa. Vishnu had broader telekinetic abilities, which he used to control the movement of his enemies in battle.
Franklin Richards (Ultraman) with parents Sue Storm (Invisible Woman) and Reed Richard (Mr Fantastic)
In the comic book world (specifically, in Marvel comics), Franklin Richards, omega-level mutant and son of Reed and Sue, is probably one of the most powerful beings in the Marvel Universe let alone just the most powerful telekinetic.
Extra Sensing
By definition, clairvoyance is the ability to predict future events. If you are clairvoyant, you know about things that you did not actually see happen or hear about. Some clairvoyants even claim to be able to speak to the dead.
Psychics, palm readers and fortune tellers all claim to have clairvoyant power. Some use a crystal ball for information. Others read tea leaves, tarot cards, marked sticks, bird movements, animal entrails, clouds, stars, bones or dice, dreams, water, smoke, and almost anything else they encounter to tell the future.
Extrasensory perception, or ESP,means the ability to “know” or “experience” something one isn’t able to see, hear, touch, smell, or taste in the usual way.So, such people are said to have an extra sense, a “sixth sense” to perceive the world.
Sometimes people refer to this paranormal ability as second sight. People use their eyes to see the world around them. But those with “second sight” claim to see things that are not there (remote viewing), or to see future objects or events.
ESP in History
The Oracle Camillo Miola (1880)
Many leaders have consulted those with paranormal abilities throughout history. The ancient Greeks communed with the gods through the oracles. Priests in the Mali Empire advised emperors and military leaders on the wishes of the ancestors. Vedic astrologers read complex charts of the stars to provide Hindu rulers with specific dates and times on which to hold major events.
Joan Quigley
But our ancient ancestors are not the only ones who consulted clairvoyant experts when making decisions.
Nancy Reagan frequently consulted with Joan Quigley throughout Ronald Reagan’s presidency. After John Hinckley Jr shot and nearly killed her husband in 1981, Nancy Reagan enlisted Quigley’s help to prevent future assassination attempts. Quigley used astrology charts to determine the best times for public appearances, traveling, and even signing the intermediate-range nuclear forces treaty with Mikhail Gorbachev.
About ten years ago, a scandal erupted in China when Liu Zhijun, the Railway Minister, confessed to consulting a feng shui master to determine the most auspicious days to break ground on new projects.
Nechung Oracle in Ladakh, 2014 Christpher Michele
Tibet has a State Oracle, the Nechung Oracle, whom the Dalai Lama consults before making major decisions. The Oracle enters a trance state to act as a medium between the natural world and the spirit world. While in this trance state, the Nechung Oracle provides guidance to observers, sharing the knowledge and wishes of kuten, the spirit world.
In the US, one of the most famous psychics in recent history is Youree Dell Harris, better known as Miss Cleo, spokeswoman for the Psychic Readers Network. On late-night infomercials for the pay-per-view paranormal service promised millions of insomniacs psychic help.
ESP in Fiction
Paranormal abilities present a world of possibilities to fiction writers as well. Stephen King’s books are full of characters with psychic talents, such as reading minds (The Shining), predicting the future (Doctor Sleep), pyrokinesis (Firestarter), psychic surgery (Green Mile), and necromancy (Pet Semetary).
Macbeth and the Witches Johann Heinrich Füssli (1741–1825)
Clairvoyants abound in Shakespeare’s plays, warning characters about things that will come and providing foreshadowing to the audience. Three witches guide Macbeth in his quest to become king, ultimately causing his downfall. A soothsayer tries to warn Julius Caesar of his impending death.
Comic books frequently star characters with a wide variety of paranormal abilities, some more useful than others. Nearly every character in Marvel’s X-Men universe has some form of psychic or telekinetic ability. They range from the extremely powerful telepath Jean Grey (Phoenix) to Eye Scream, a mutant with the amazing ability to turn himself into any flavor of ice cream.
Types of ESP
Wikipedia breaks down Extra Sensory Perception into specific categories, though there is some overlap.
Precognition (including psychic premonitions) – The ability to perceive or gain knowledge about future events, without using induction or deduction from known facts.
Remote viewing, telesthesia or remote sensing – The ability to see a distant or unseen target using extrasensory perception.
Retrocognition or postcognition – The ability to supernaturally perceive past events.
Telepathy – The ability to transmit or receive thoughts supernaturally.
And so we come to psychics, people who have one or more of these paranormal mental powers and abilities (such as the ability to predict the future, to know what other people are thinking, or to receive messages from dead people.)
Psychic Abilities
Wikipedia presents a list of alleged psychic abilities that real-world people have claimed to possess.
Astral projection or mental projection – The ability to voluntarily project an astral body or mental body, being associated with the out-of-body experience, in which one’s consciousness is felt to separate from the physical body temporarily.
Atmokinesis – The ability to control the weather such as calling rainfall or storms.
Automatic writing – The ability to draw or write without conscious intent.
Bilocation — The ability to be present in two different places at the same time, usually attributed to a saint.
Energy medicine – The ability to heal with one’s own empathic, etheric, astral, mental or spiritual energy.
Ergokinesis – The ability to influence the movement of energy, such as electricity, without direct interaction.
Iddhi – Psychic abilities gained through Buddhist meditation.
Inedia – The ability to survive without eating or drinking, multiple cases have resulted in starvation or dehydration.
An advertising poster depicting magician Harry Kellar performing the “Levitation of Princess Karnac” illusion, 1894
Levitation or transvection – The ability to float or fly by mystical means.
Mediumship or channeling – The ability to communicate with spirits.
Petrification — The power to turn a living being to stone by looking them in the eye.
Prophecy (also prediction, premonition, or prognostication) — the ability to foretell events, without using induction or deduction from known facts.
Psychic surgery – The ability to remove disease or disorder within or over the body tissue via an “energetic” incision that heals immediately afterwards.
Psychokinesis or telekinesis – The ability to influence a physical system without physical interaction, typically manifesting as being able to exert force, control objects and move matter with one’s mind.
Pyrokinesis – The ability to control flames, fire, or heat using one’s mind.
Shapeshifting or transformation — The ability to physically transform the user’s body into anything.
Thoughtography – The ability to impress an image by ‘burning’ it on a surface using one’s own mind only.
Xenoglossy — The ability of a person to suddenly learn to write and speak a foreign language without any natural means such as studying or research, but that is often rather bestowed by divine agents.
Witnessing – The gift of being visited by high profile spiritual beings such as Mary, Jesus or Fudosama (Acala) from Buddhist Traditions.
BOTTOM LINE: Who knew there were so many ways to be not normal? Surely one appeals to you—or maybe more than one!
(not to be confused with Syndrome, the imposter superhero from Disney’s The Incredibles)
Imposter syndrome is that gnawing feeling of self-doubt and incompetence coupled with the dread of being exposed as a fraud. Impostor syndrome (also known as impostor phenomenon, impostorism, or perceived fraudulence), involves feelings of self-doubt and personal incompetence that persist despite education, experience, and accomplishments.
Famous “Imposters”
Phoenix Performance Partners listed 18 famous people who suffer imposter syndrome. They discussed it openly, and I’ve quoted them here.
“The exaggerated esteem in which my lifework is held makes me very ill at ease. I feel compelled to think of myself as an involuntary swindler.” Albert Einstein: Nobel Prize-winning Physicist
“I have written 11 books, but each time I think, ‘uh oh, they’re going to find out now. I’ve run a game on everybody, and they’re going to find me out.’” Maya Angelou: Nobel Laureate, poet, author
“I still have a little impostor syndrome… It doesn’t go away, that feeling that you shouldn’t take me that seriously. What do I know? I share that with you because we all have doubts in our abilities, about our power and what that power is.” Michelle Obama: lawyer, author, former First Lady
“Very few people, whether you’ve been in that job before or not, get into the seat and believe today that they are now qualified to be the CEO. They’re not going to tell you that, but it’s true.” Howard Schultz: former CEO of Starbucks
“Every time I took a test, I was sure that it had gone badly. And every time I didn’t embarrass myself — or even excelled — I believed that I had fooled everyone yet again. One day soon, the jig would be up.” Sheryl Sandberg: Harvard graduate, Facebook COO, author of Lean In
“There are an awful lot of people out there who think I’m an expert. How do these people believe all this about me? I’m so much aware of all the things I don’t know.” Dr. Margaret Chan: former Director General of the World Health Organization
“Today, I feel much like I did when I came to Harvard Yard as a freshman in 1999. I felt like there had been some mistake, that I wasn’t smart enough to be in this company, and that every time I opened my mouth I would have to prove that I wasn’t just a dumb actress.” Natalie Portman: Harvard graduate, Academy Award winning actress
“No matter what we’ve done, there comes a point where you think, ‘How did I get here? When are they going to discover that I am, in fact, a fraud and take everything away from me?’” Tom Hanks: Academy Award winning actor and filmmaker
“I’d been obsessed with going to Cambridge even before I’d learned English, and my mother had somehow helped make it happen from our one-bedroom apartment in Athens. I felt like there I finally was, but the minute I opened my mouth, people would know I didn’t really belong. My mother taught me that fearlessness isn’t the absence of fear, but the mastery of it. I leaned into my fear by trying to get into the Cambridge Union (the debating society,) where I eventually became the first foreign president. What I learned was that what you have to say is more important than how you sound, which is to say that that feeling that we don’t belong is much more likely to come from us — from that obnoxious roommate inside our heads — than it is from someone else (who is likely dealing with their own forms of imposter syndrome).” Arianna Huffington: author, columnist, founder of Huffington Post
“Yes, you’re an impostor. So am I and so is everyone else. Superman still lives on Krypton and the rest of us are just doing our best.” Seth Godin: author, lecturer, teacher, business owner
“The beauty of the impostor syndrome is you vacillate between extreme egomania, and a complete feeling of: ‘I’m a fraud! Oh god, they’re on to me! I’m a fraud!’ So you just try to ride the egomania when it comes and enjoy it, and then slide through the idea of fraud.” Tina Fey: comedian, author, and actor, winner of Emmy Awards, Golden Globe Awards, Screen Actor’s Guild Awards, and the youngest ever recipient of the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor
“I have spent my years since Princeton, while at law school and in my various professional jobs, not feeling completely a part of the worlds I inhabit. I am always looking over my shoulder wondering if I measure up.” Sonia Sotomayor: Supreme Court justice
“I go through acute imposter syndrome with every role. I think winning an Oscar may in fact have made it worse. Now I’ve achieved this, what am I going to do next? What do I strive for? Then I remember that I didn’t get into acting for the accolades, I got into it for the joy of telling stories.” Lupita Nyong’o: Academy Award winning actress
“It’s almost like the better I do, the more my feeling of inadequacy actually increases, because I’m just going, ‘Any moment, someone’s going to find out I’m a total fraud, and that I don’t deserve any of what I’ve achieved.” Emma Watson: actress, UN Women Global Goodwill Ambassador, founder of the United Nations HeForShe campaign
“On the first season of Top Chef, I suffered from impostor syndrome.” Padma Lakshmi: author, model, host of Top Chef, UN Goodwill Ambassador, founder of the Endometriosis Foundation of America
“I think even being an actress for over a decade now, I still have imposter syndrome. Where you’re asking yourself, ‘Oh, is this really what I’m supposed to be doing?’” Maisie Williams: award winning actress and producer
“Who doesn’t suffer from imposter syndrome? Even when I sold my business for $66 Million, I felt like an absolute fraud!” Barbara Corcoran: real estate mogul and long-time judge on Shark Tank
“There were two Venus Williamses in our family. It was crazy… my parents would make me order first, but once she ordered, I’d change my mind. It was tough for me to stop being Venus and become the person I am.” Serena Williams: considered the grestest women’s tennis player of all time, winner of 23 Grand Slam singles titles
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Conclusion: how one sees oneself may defy all sorts of external validation.
According to a 2020 review featured in Medical News Today, 9%–82% of people experience impostor syndrome— a range so broad as to be almost meaningless! But whatever. The numbers vary depending on who participates in a study.
Imposter syndrome is prevalent within the tech industry, with about 58% of tech employees stating that they currently experience some form of the condition within their careers. It’s especially common in software engineers, developers, and designers.
Many people experience symptoms for a limited time, such as in the first few weeks of a new job. For others, the experience can be lifelong.
Imposter syndrome is likely the result of multiple factors, including personality traits (such as perfectionism) and family background. One theory is that imposter syndrome is rooted in families that value achievement above all else.
75% of executive women report having personally experienced imposter syndrome at certain points in their career
85% believe imposter syndrome is commonly experienced by women in corporate America
74% percent of executive women believe that their male counterparts do not experience feelings of self-doubt as much as female leaders do
81% believe they put more pressure on themselves not to fail than men do
What might explain these gender differences? In studies of how women and men explain their successes and failures, women tend to attribute their successes to luck or other external factors while blaming themselves for failures. Men are the opposite: they attribute their successes to talent and hard work and blame failures on luck or other external factors.
Some women are genuinely imposters!
However, a report published in Harvard Business Review suggests that women experiencing self-doubt in the workplace may be facing systemic discrimination and exclusion rather than imposter syndrome. When accomplished, capable, intelligent women are consistently reminded, both subtly and overtly, that they do not belong in the upper echelons of power, it is inevitable that some of them will begin to internalize this message.
Recognizing Imposter Syndrome
Symptoms of impostor syndrome can look different for different people, though there are some consistent and tell-tale red flags. Symptoms might include
Holy stunt doubles, Bat Man! …er, Spider Man!
Extreme lack of self confidence
Feelings of inadequacy
Constant comparison to other people
Anxiety
Self doubt
Distrust in one’s own intuition and capabilities
Negative self-talk
Irrational fears of the future
In professional settings, efforts to counter these feelings might include taking on extra work to make sure you’re “doing it all”; shrugging off accolades; not responding to job postings unless you meet every single requirement; working harder and holding yourself to ever higher standards.
Though the impostor phenomenon isn’t an official diagnosis listed in the DSM, psychologists and others acknowledge that it is a very real and specific form of intellectual self-doubt. Besides anxiety, impostor feelings are often accompanied by depression. FYI, women are nearly twice as likely as men to be diagnosed with depression.
On the opposite side of imposter syndrome sits overconfidence, otherwise known as the Dunning-Kruger Effect. It derives its name from a study published in 1999 by David Dunning and Justin Kruger in the Journal of Economic Psychology. While imposter syndrome develops when one underestimates their own values, skills, and accomplishments, those experiencing the Dunning-Kruger effect do the reverse. Some say this syndrome is much more harmful because people without competence are extremely confident.
Bottom line: Note your own tendencies toward imposter syndrome and stay in touch with reality.
Something tells me these Disney heroines may be imposters.
Because this is Women’s History Month, every day I’ve been spotlighting a woman on my Facebook page. But Fannie Merritt Farmer (1857-1915) deserves more than a paragraph!
(Note: Though she sometimes spelled her first name “Fanny,” Fannie Merritt Farmer was not affiliated with the Fanny Farmer candy company. Frank O’Connor named his candy company after the chef and food scientist in part to ride the wave of her fame in 1919.)
Early Culinary Training
Fannie Farmer was born on March 23, 1857, in Boston, Massachusetts. The oldest of four daughters in a family that highly valued education, she was expected to go to college, but suffered a paralytic stroke at the age of 16. Some say she contracted polio that permanently affected her left leg. In any case, for the next several years she was unable to walk and was cared for in her parents’ home.
Once she was able to walk again, she did so with a pronounced limp. At the end of her life, she was again confined to a wheelchair. And none of this kept her from achieving much and influencing virtually every household in the United States even today.
During the time she was homebound, Fannie took up cooking for guests in her mother’s boarding house. Not until the age of 30 did she enroll in the Boston Cooking School. The Women’s Education Association of Boston founded the Boston Cooking School in 1879 “to offer instruction in cooking to those who wished to earn their livelihood as cooks, or who would make practical use of such information in their families.”
Fannie enrolled during the height of the domestic science movement. The curriculum covered all the basics, including nutrition and diet for the well, convalescent cookery, techniques of cleaning and sanitation, chemical analysis of food, techniques of cooking and baking, and household management.
Fannie was one of the school’s top students. She graduated in 1889 and stayed on as assistant to the director, and in 1891, she became school principal. The school became famous after the publication of The Boston Cooking School Cookbook by Fannie Merritt Farmer in 1896.
The publisher, (Little, Brown & Company) did not expect good sales and printed a first edition of only 3,000 copies—at Fannie Farmer’s expense! Thus she became an early “self-published” authors who made good. Subsequent editions were published as The Fannie Farmer Cookbook (or The Fanny Farmer Cookbook).
The cookbook was titled The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book through the eighth edition, published in 1946. The ninth edition, published in 1951, was titled The New Fannie Farmer Boston Cooking-School Cook Book. Not until the eleventh edition, 1965, did it become The Fannie Farmer Cookbook.
Farmer’s book eventually contained 1,850 recipes. As was the custom for cookbooks of the day, she included essays on housekeeping, cleaning, canning and drying fruits and vegetables, and nutritional information. Farmer also provided scientific explanations of the chemical processes that occur in food during cooking,
The Mother of Level Measurements Photo: Bettmann/Getty
And (in my opinion) the most important contribution for cooks today: she standardized measurements used in cooking throughout the US. I’m not alone in this; food historians have called her the “mother of level measurements.” Prior to Fannie Farmer, recipe authors listed ingredients as a lump of butter, a teacup of milk, a goodly amount of honey, … Level cups and teaspoons (or fractions thereof) as we know them today are thanks to Fannie Farmer.
Fannie Farmer’s Impact
Her cookbook was so popular in the United States—so thorough, and so comprehensive—that The Fannie Farmer Cookbook, went through twelve editions. By 1979, the Fannie Farmer Cookbook Corporation copyrighted and published The Fannie Farmer Cookbook, and Marion Cunningham updated the thirteenth edition.
Farmer left the School in 1902 and created Miss Farmer’s School of Cookery. She began by teaching women plain and fancy cooking, but her interests eventually led her to develop a complete work of diet and nutrition for the ill, titled Food and Cookery for the Sick and Convalescent which contained thirty pages on diabetes.
Farmer gave lectures at Harvard Medical School, teaching convalescent diet and nutrition to doctors and nurses, and taught a course on dietary preparation at Harvard Medical School. She felt so strongly about the significance of proper food for the sick that she believed she would be remembered chiefly for her work in that field.
During the last seven years of her life, Farmer always used a wheelchair. Even so, she continued to write, invent recipes, and lecture, until ten days before her death. The Boston Evening Transcript published her lectures, which were picked up by newspapers nationwide. Farmer died in 1915 at age 57 of complications related to her stroke/polio.
As far as I can tell, this is a complete list of her books:
Farmer, Fannie Merritt (1896). Boston Cooking-School Cookbook. Boston, MA: Little, Brown, and Company. A complete list of editions may be found at Boston Cooking-School Cook Book.
Farmer, Fannie Merritt (1904). Food and Cookery for the Sick and Convalescent. Boston, MA: Little, Brown & Co.
Farmer, Fannie Merritt (1905). What to Have for Dinner: Containing Menus with Recipes for their Preparation. New York, NY: Dodge Publishing Company.
Farmer, Fannie Merritt (1911). Catering for Special Occasions, with Menus and Recipes. Philadelphia, PA: D. McKay.
Farmer, Fannie Merritt (1912). A New Book of Cookery: Eight-hundred and Sixty Recipes Covering the Whole Range of Cookery. Boston, MA: Little, Brown, and Company.
Farmer, Fannie Merritt, ed. (1913). The Priscilla Cook Book for Everyday Housekeepers. Boston, MA: The Priscilla Publishing Company.
Farmer, Fannie Merritt (1914). A Book of Good Dinners for My Friend; or “What to Have for Dinner”. New York, NY: Dodge Publishing Company.
[Republication of What to Have for Dinner: Containing Menus with Recipes for their Preparation (1905).]
One hundred and three years after her death The New York Times published a belated obituary for Fannie Merritt Farmer. This obituary and Wikipedia are the primary sources used for this blog. I finally found a biography for her, but I don’t have it and don’t know how comprehensive it is.
Bottom line: People should know that Fannie Merritt Farmer was more than a compiler—or even a creator—of recipes.
OlympicGold Medals are Pretty Good Signals of External Validation
Short answer = everybody needs external validation.
We all begin life in a state of complete reliance on external validation. From cues we receive from others around us, we form opinions about whether our behaviors/opinions/attitudes/beliefs/values are good and praiseworthy — or not. For example:
Is it okay to take food off another person’s plate?
Is there a god? And if so, which one?
Is going to a place of worship necessary?
Is walking naked down the street acceptable?
Is the world a safe place?
When is it okay to lie?
What sort of beauty, hygiene, or grooming standards are most desirable?
Is sex before marriage okay?
Is it okay to be LGBTQ?
What obligations are owed to family members?
Are handwritten thank you notes necessary?
When we are validated by others it feels good, and this tends to make us want to behave in a similar fashion in the future, in order to experience the same good feelings. Seeking validation from others means seeking their approval for your thoughts, feelings, beliefs, choices, values, and actions.
Social psychologist C. H. Cooley called this reliance on external validation “The Looking Glass Self.” In his book On Self and Social Organization, he summed up humans’ tendency to rely on others’ perceptions to form their own sense of identity as “I am not what I think I am and I am not what you think I am; I am what I think that you think I am.”
A Necessary Thing
Seeking external validation in unfamiliar situations is normal, healthy, and valuable.
Pat on the Back
You need to be able to take instructions and constructive criticism from others in order to collaborate with peers or even simply to function in society. Thus, as adults, external validation is a necessary part of being human, even if the American ideal of individualism tells us otherwise.
The desire to seek validation stems from the basic human need to be liked and accepted by others. If all our behaviors, opinions, attitudes, and beliefs are ignored or wrong (based on cues from others), low self-esteem is a likely result. If one has a fragile sense of self-worth, it can be hard to validate one’s own experiences, resulting in a need to seek approval from others.
Seeking validation from others has become a common way of living. Often we do things hoping to be praised by others so that we can feel good about ourselves. Or we avoid doing or saying something because we worry that we will be criticized by someone for our opinion, idea, action, or choice.
The need for external validation is at an all-time high. More than ever, people want to feel seen and heard and to know their life matters. Indeed, perhaps the extensive use of social media is evidence of that. When you turn down the volume of everything going on in the world around you, these questions are probably on repeat in the back of your mind, too.
A Good Thing
You don’t need to seek external validation for it to feel good! Whether someone compliments you at work, comments on a picture you posted, or expresses gratitude for you, this is external validation.
In some cases, external validation is more concrete than in others. For example:
Pay raises
Promotions
Scholarships or fellowships
Medals
Awards
Winning elections
Making the NYT bestsellers list
Good news: If you are in a relationship that makes you feel heard, valued, and understood, the positive effects spread. Having someone who understands and validates your feelings can be nothing short of fulfilling. Such validation builds one’s self-esteem and one’s confidence in a broader sense.
As Belgian psychotherapist Esther Perel said, “Self-love is about letting others love us even when we feel unlovable because their version of us is kinder than our own.”
Too Much of a Good Thing
Everyone Gets a Trophy!
Some people need constant validation because they’re not confident in their own abilities. Some say that the root cause of most approval-seeking behavior is low self-esteem. This feeling of inferiority stems from factors like inherent personality, upbringing, peer pressure, education, culture, and work-life. As negative feedback accumulates over time, the need to seek approval for anything and everything grows.
Besides low self-esteem, attention-seeking behavior may stem from jealousy, loneliness, or as a result of a personality disorder.
While desiring external validation is normal and healthy, it can go too far when desiring praise and attention from others becomes an addiction, and/or when it is not balanced by healthy levels of self-esteem. Why do you need constant validation? Dr Preeti Kocchar, says that people crave attention for a variety of reasons, including—in some extreme cases—the presence of personality disorders.
Perhaps Not the Sort of Recognition One Wants
For example:
Narcissists constantly need attention and validation. They constantly try to elicit praise and approval from others to shore up their fragile egos, but no matter how much they’re given, they always want more.
Histrionic personality disorder is a type of psychiatric disorder that features attention-seeking behaviors, seductive behavior, and emotional over-reaction.
Perfectionism also leads us to constantly seek positive approval from others, impeding our ability to accept constructive feedback from others or internal validation from ourselves.
What does an unhealthy reliance on external validation look like? Not being able to confront people or disagree, changing your thoughts and beliefs because someone else either approves or disapproves, and ascribing your self-worth to the approval of others — all are examples of a reliance on external validation.
People always looking for external validation to feel good about themselves can be extremely irritating, leading to negative feedback, resulting in a greater need for external validation … a vicious circle.
Do You Rely Too Much on External Validation?
You may be searching for too much external validation if you find yourself doing the following:
Feeling guilty about setting boundaries with others.
Overachieving in an attempt to garner praise from others.
Pretending to be unable to do something so someone will teach, help, or watch the attempt to do it.
Expressing controversial opinions or behaviors primarily to provoke a reaction in others.
Pointing out acgievements or “humble bragging” to elicit compliments.
Embellishing stories to gain praise or sympathy.
Jumping from relationship to relationship without taking the time to heal because you feel you can’t be alone.
Don’t measure yourself on the basis of social media likes.
Bottom Line: Everyone seeks external validation sometimes, in some situations—which is not only natural and healthy, but also necessary. However, in this case, too much of a good thing is NOT still a good thing.
I’m not talking people. One of my distant, distant ancestors, George Soule, was part of the first wave of immigrants arriving on the Mayflower. (Personal aside: I find it ironic that my descent from George Soule is through my half-Native American great-grandmother.)
No, this blog isn’t about people who’ve come here, or who might come here in the future. But beware the plant and animal come heres!
The National Park Service defines an invasive species as a non-native species that causes harm to the environment, economy, or human, animal, or plant health (Executive Order 13751, Dec 3, 2020). Invasive species are one of the leading causes of global biodiversity loss. They can damage native habitats, spread diseases, cause extinctions, and leave massive cleanup bills in their wake.
The Best of Intentions
A Murmuration of Starlings
I recently wrote a blog about starlings, introduced to Central Park, NYC. One story is that Shakespeare lovers brought them to North America to benefit homesick European immigrants. Another is that an avid gardener imported starlings to eat a particular caterpillar invading his garden. Regardless of intentions, estimates of the devastation caused by starlings to crops and livestock range from $800 million and $1.6 billion per year.
Starlings are one example of a species brought to a new area on purpose. People and businesses that import these species often do not anticipate the consequences.
Bufflegrass
Buffelgrass, a hearty, drought-tolerant grass, originally comes from eastern Asia, southern Europe, and most of Africa. Ranchers introduced buffelgrass in Arizona in the 1930’s as livestock forage. Later, soil conservationists planted it for erosion control and soil stabilization. It has spread rapidly across the desert Southwest since the 1980s. Today, however, its rapid spread has converted fire-resistant desert into flammable grassland, threatening saguaro cacti and other indigenous species. Buffelgrass fires can reach 1600F and spread between 3 and 9 mph, depending on wind speeds.
Cheatgrass / Downy Brome
A similar example is cheatgrass, or downy brome, a Eurasian native that now infests vast reaches of sagebrush steppe in the Intermountain West (including wilderness acreage). Cheatgrass ignites at a lower temperature, promoting hotter and more frequent fires that can reduce or eliminate native sagebrush and negatively impact shrub-steppe species, such as the greater sage grouse.
Faya Bush / Fire Tree
The Portuguese introduced the faya tree (also called the faya bush or fire tree), native to the Azores and the Canary Islands, to Hawaii for both practical and ornamental reason. This aggressively invasive exotic now displaces native forest trees in the Hawaii Volcanoes Wilderness and elsewhere on the Big Island. In addition to competing with native species for habitat, faya trees add significant amounts of nitrogen to soil, which has the double impact of making it impossible for native species to grow and encouraging other invasive species in the area.
Arctic Fox
Although Arctic foxes are native to Alaska’s mainland, fur farmers introduced Arctic foxes on more than 450 Alaskan islands between 1750 and 1950. There, they threaten native seabirds by stealing eggs. (Ironically, human misbehavior may now be having the opposite effect in Norway, where littering motorists are attracting red foxes, which displace the formerly invasive Arctic foxes!)
The US Soil Conservation Service introduced kudzu, a climbing perennial vine native to Japan and south-east China, during the Centennial International Exhibition of 1876, the first official World’s Fair in the U.S. Farmers and soil biologists first considered kudzu a great forage and ornamental plant because of its high-protein, starchy roots, sweet blooms, medicinal value, and impressive leaves. At first, people kept kudzu corralled to small pastures and in decorative pots.
Kudzu Overgrowing a Railroad Bridge in Arkansas
However, between the 1930s and 1950s, the Civilian Conservation Core promoted kudzu as a tool to prevent soil erosion. Botanists and nurseries distributed kudzu seedlings, and kudzu planting societies paid bounties to schools, farmers, highway maintenance, and even whole towns to plant kudzu all over the American South.
Highway and railroad developers planted kudzu seedlings to cover landscape gashes left bare by driving rail beds and road beds through formerly undeveloped land. Without grazing to keep growth in check, kudzu grows over anything in its way, killing other flora and foliage. An invasion of kudzu means leaf litter changes and decomposition processes alter, with a 28 per cent reduction in stocks of soil carbon, so the spread of the vine could contribute to climate change.
Kudzu Bug (Megacopta cribraria)
Kudzu may not be as serious a problem as it appears today. For one thing, kudzu often seems more ubiquitous than it really is because it grows most unchecked in areas where it is also most visible – along highways and railway embankments where passersby frequently encounter it. Some highway maintenance groups have brought small flocks of pigs and goats to graze in these areas, bringing some measure of control to the spread of the vines. For another, the kudzu bug, another recent “come-here” species, has been happily devouring kudzu vines all along the Atlantic seaboard, also eating many other legume plants they encounter. Perhaps we’ll soon be facing an infestation of wild pigs and kudzu bugs instead of kuduzu!
Control a Pest with Another Pest
Often, a species is introduced as a form of pest control. (See the above paragraph on starlings.)
Harlequin Ladybird
One of the most invasive insect species is the harlequin ladybird (Harmonia axyridis), which tends to out-compete and eat native ladybirds. Agriculturalists introduced harlequin ladybirds, originally from central Asia, to Europe and North America in 1916 to control scale insects and aphids. Not until 1988 did these ladybirds manage to establish themselves in the wild, after which their populations exploded. They still provide valuable pest-control services to farmers, but they also breed prolifically, displace and consume native insect species, potentially spread parasites, and invade homes.
Mosquitofish
Unlike the other invasive species on this list, the mosquitofish is native to North America, inhabiting shallow water away from larger fish in southern parts of Illinois and Indiana, throughout the Mississippi River. It has become an invasive species in other parts of the world, where scientists have intentionallly introduced the little creature to areas with large populations of mosquitoes to decrease the number of bugs by eating their larvae. In areas of South America and along the Black Sea, environmentalists estimate that the introduction of the mosquitofish has effectively eliminated malaria. However, native fish were already good at supplying ‘maximal control’ – introducing the mosquitofish has turned out to be more damaging to aquatic life. Mosquitofish are aggressive and injure or kill other small fish. They are also very good at breeding, taking over natural habitats.
Asian mongoose
Sugar cane farmers introduced the small Asian mongoose to Hawaii in 1883 after hearing about Jamaican plantations unleashing the predator to control rat populations. It was a mistake of epic proportions. Unfortunately, the targeted rats are nocturnal and the exotic mongooses are diurnal, so they never crossed paths. Rather than rats, the mongoose began eating the native birds instead. Mongoose threaten several sea turtle species and at least eight endangered bird species, including the Hawaiian state bird, the nēnē. They breed prolifically and reach sexual maturity early
The Ones That Got Away
Several invasive species descended from pets that escaped or were released into the wild.
Burmese Python Fighting an Alligator
Many people have released pet Burmese pythons into the Everglades in Florida. These snakes can grow to 20 feet (6 meters) long. Pythons, native to the jungles of southeast Asia, have few natural predators in the Everglades. They feast on many local species, including rabbits, possum, raccoons, deer, foxes, and even alligators. The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission now hosts an annual Python Challenge, offering bounties and sometimes employing professional bounty hunters to encourage hunters to help control this invasive predators.
Lionfish
Lionfish are popular for aquariums, so it’s plausible that repeated escapes via aquarium releases are responsible. Native to the Indo-Pacific ocean region, first detected along the Florida coast in the 1980s, lionfish are now quickly spreading throughout the coasts and coral reefs of the East Coast. Lionfish are voracious eaters and their venomous dorsal spines have helped to protect them, and they have very few natural predators in the Atlantic.
Silver Carp
Bighead carp and silver carp (native to China, also called Asian carps) are two large species of fish that escaped from fish farms in the 1990s and are now common in the Missouri River. They feed on plankton, floating in the water. They have become invasive by out-competing local species for food. For example, the feeding cycle of paddlefish is slower than that of the carp. There are now so many invasive carp in the lower Missouri River that paddlefish do not have enough food.
Many invasive species destroy habitat, the places where other plants and animals naturally live.
Nutria
Ranchers brought Nutria (large rodents native to South America) to North America in the 1900s, hoping to raise them for their fur. Some ranchers released the stock of Nutria into the wild when they failed to bring in the expected revenue. Today, they are a major pest in the Gulf Coast and Chesapeake Bay. Nutria eat tall grasses and rushes, vital to the regions’ marshy wetlands. They provide food, nesting sites, and shelter for many organisms. They also help secure sediment and soil, preventing the erosion of land. Nutria destroy the area’s food web and habitat by consuming the wetland grasses.
Paper Mulberry Tree
A silkworm’s favorite food is the leaves of the paper mulberry tree. US entrepreneurs thought that if they introduced the foliage, they could start their own silk industry. Unfortunately, the climate was not appropriate for the silkworm and the mulberry is a highly invasive species. Rather than feeding silkworms, paper mulberry trees began disrupting the natural ecosystem. The mulberry tree consumes an extremely high amount of water, which chokes the native foliage. Its root systems are also very strong and fast-growing – they tend to cause problems with drainage pipes.
Let’s Not Overlook Ornamentals
Kudzu was not the only plant originally introduced as an ornament.
The introduction of English ivy dates back to the early 1700s when European colonists imported the plant as an easy-to-grow evergreen groundcover. Today, people continue to sell and plant English ivy in the United States even though it is one of the worst spread-invasive plants because it can handle a wide range of conditions, particularly on the east and west coasts. English ivy is an aggressive-spreading vine which can slowly kill trees by restricting light. It spreads by vegetative reproduction and when its seeds hitch a ride in the digestive systems of birds.
Purple Loosestrife
Horticulturists introduced purple loosestrife to the United States in the early 1800s for ornamental and medicinal uses. Now growing invasively in most states, purple loosestrife can become the dominant plant species in wetlands. One plant can produce as many as 2 million wind-dispersed seeds per year and underground stems grow at a rate of 1 foot per year. Beginning in the 1980s, biologists encouraged several species of leaf beetles and moths to build habitats in areas overrun with purple loosestrife, creating what scientists are hailing as a model of biological pest control.
Japanese Honeysuckle
One of many invasive varieties of honeysuckle in the United States, Japanese honeysuckle (Lonicera japonica) first came to Long Island, NY, in 1806 for ornamental use and erosion control. The Japanese honeysuckle has can grow in deep shade and is particularly detrimental to forest lands in the Northeast. The heavily fruiting plant forms a dense thicket, crowding out native plants, and birds spread the seeds far and wide. The plant has become prolific throughout much of the East Coast as it adapts to a wide range of conditions. Japanese honeysuckle is an aggressive vine that smothers, shades and girdles other competing vegetation. Many birds eat the fruit of this plant, thereby spreading the honeysuckle’s seeds.
Japanese Barberry
Japanese barberry was introduced to the United States in the 1800s as an ornamental. Growers shipped seeds of Japanese barberry from Russia to the Arnold Arboretum in 1875 as an alternative to European barberry (Berberis vulgaris), which had fallen out of favor as it was a host to Black Rust Stem—a serious fungus effecting cereal crops. In addition to forming such dense growth thickets that they crowd out other plant species, Japanese barberry plants provide ideal shelters for the black-legged ticks carrying lyme disease.
Norway Maple
The plant explorer John Bartram introduced the Norway maple to the United States from England in 1756. Its widely adaptable growth pattern led to a rapid rise in popularity, particularly in towns and in rural communities. The Norway maple displaces native trees and has the potential to dominate a landscape in both the Northeast and Northwest. It displaces native maples like the sugar maple and its dense canopy shades out wildflowers.
Golden Bamboo
Bamboo native to Asia is highly invasive and damaging in the United States thanks to its aggressive spreading abilities. There are two species that are especially problematic in Virginia: Phyllostachys aurea (Golden Bamboo) and Phyllostachys aureosulcata (Yellow Groove Bamboo). Once this plant is established, it is difficult to remove. It can grow up to a foot a day and crowd out other plants. Underground runners choke the root systems of native plants, sending up new shoots beyond the original planting area. If you really want to grow ornamental bamboo, consider one of the three bamboo species native to the U.S.: hill cane (Arundinaria appalachiana), river cane (Arundinaria gigantea), and switch cane (Arundinaria tecta).
International Hitchhikers
Brown Norway Rat
Invasive species are primarily spread by human activities, often unintentionally. People, and the goods we use, travel around the world very quickly, and they often carry uninvited species with them. One of the most famous historical hitchikers may be the fleas that spread the Black Death in the 14th Century.
Modern international shipping still unwittlingly spreads invasive species. Rats from Norway have escaped from ships and endanger Alaska’s island-nesting seabird populations. Many ships carry aquatic organisms in their ballast water, while smaller boats may carry them on their propellers.
Zebra Mussels
“Many invasive species are introduced into a new region accidentally. Zebra mussels are native to the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea in Central Asia. Zebra mussels arrived in the Great Lakes of North America accidentally, stuck to large ships that traveled between the two regions. There are now so many zebra mussels in the Great Lakes that they have threatened native species.”
In addition, small zebra mussels clog the cooling systems in boat engines, while larger ones have damaged water pipes at power plants throughout the Great Lakes. This isn’t the only invasive species that causes property damage.
Insects can get into wood, shipping palettes, and crates that are shipped around the world.
Spotted Lanternfly
Borwn marmorated stink bugs feed on crops and ornamental plants. They stowed away, probably in shipping containers, coming to North American at some point in the 1990s.
Spotted wing drosophila, rather than feeding on overripe fruit like most flies, targets and damages unripe or barely ripe fruit, making it extra destructive. They likely hitched a ride on fruit imported to Hawaii from their native Asia in the 1980s and into the continental US in 2008.
The khapra beetle attacks stored grain and can cause it to lose 70 percent of its weight or value. The Invasive Species Specialist Group ranks it among the 100 worst invasive species of all time.
The spotted lanterfly hitched a ride to Pennsylvania in 2014, most likely by attaching its eggs to something imported from southern China or Vietnam. It is not quite invasive yet, but it looks inevitable that it will be soon.
Beware climate change
In addition, higher average temperatures and changes in rain and snow patterns caused by climate change will enable some invasive plant species—such as garlic mustard, kudzu, and purple loosestrife—to move into new areas. Insect pest infestations will be more severe as pests such as mountain pine beetle are able to take advantage of drought-weakened plants.
Rising Temperatures Thawing Arctic Sea Ice Bring New Invasive Species to the Area
Note: Not all non-native species are invasive. For example, most of the food crops grown in the United States, including popular varieties of wheat, tomatoes, and rice, are not native to the region. Personally, I’m delighted by the availability of hellebores.
In conclusion: Only a small percent of introduced species become invasive. However, it is nearly impossible—even for scientists—to predict which species will become invasive. Some species are present for many years before they exhibit invasive characteristics. And new species are being introduced every day.
Bottom Line: Invasive species are among the leading threats to native wildlife. Approximately 42 percent of threatened or endangered species are at risk due to invasive species. Be aware!
Since that 1950 first, there have been six African American Pulitzer Prize winners in poetry (including Tracy K. Smith, the Poet Laureate of the U.S. from 2017 to 2019), four in drama, and a special citation for Alex Haley, author of Roots.
So far, the only Black American to win a Nobel Prize in literature is Toni Morrison, in 1993.
These recent accolades have grown from deep historical roots.
Early Examples of Poetry and Fiction
Lucy Terry Prince, often credited as simply Lucy Terry (1733–1821), was an American settler and poet. As an infant, she was kidnapped in Africa and sold into slavery in the colony of Rhode Island. Obijah Prince, her future husband purchased her freedom before their marriage in 1756. She composed a ballad poem, “Bars Fight”, about a 1746 altercation between white settlers and the native Pocomtuc. This poem was preserved orally until being published in 1855. It is considered the oldest known work of literature by an African American.
Another early African-American author was Jupiter Hammon (1711–c1806), enslaved as a domestic servant in Queens, New York. Hammon, considered the first published Black writer in America, printed his poem “An Evening Thought: Salvation by Christ with Penitential Cries” as a broadside in early 1761. His speech “An Address to the Negroes in the State of New York”(1787) may be the first oration by an African American speaker that was later published. In 1778 he wrote an ode to Phillis Wheatley, in which he discussed their shared humanity and common bonds.
The poet Phillis Wheatley (c. 1753–1784) published her bookPoems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moralin 1773. This first book aimed to prove that “Negros, Black as Cain,” were not inherently inferior to whites in matters of the spirit and thus could “join th’ angelic train” as spiritual equals to whites. Her mastery of a wide range of classical poetic genres, Greek and Latin classics, history, British literature, and theology proved that claims that only Europeans were capable of intelligence and artistic creation were patently false. Members of the Abolitionist movement embraced Wheatley’s literary prowess, which combined elements from many genres of poetry with Gambian elegiac forms and religious themes to create work that was read and shared by people on both sides of the Atlantic. In addition to being the the first African American to publish a book, Wheatley was the first to achieve an international reputation as a writer. Selina Hastings, the Countess of Huntington, was so impressed by Phillis Wheatley’s skill that she gave the financial support to publish Wheatley’s book in London.
Victor Séjour (1817–74) wrote “The Mulatto”(1837), the first published work of fiction known to have an African American author. Juan Victor Séjour Marcou et Ferrand was an American Creole of color and expatriate writer. Born free in New Orleans, he spent most of his career in Paris and published his fiction and plays in French. “The Mulatto” did not appear in English until the Norton Anthology of African American Literature was published in 1997.
In 1853 William Wells Brown, an internationally known fugitive slave narrator, authored the first Black American novel, Clotel; or, The President’s Daughter (1853). The story centers around two mixed-race women fathered by Thomas Jefferson and held in slavery in Monticello. Like Phillis Wheatley’s poetry, Brown’s book was first published in London. Inspired by the success of Frederick Douglass’s work, Brown published Narrative of William W. Brown,a FugitiveSlave, Written by Himself in 1845, detailing his early life in Missouri and his escape from slavery. In 1858, he wrote The Escape, the first play written by an African American author to be published in America.
Frank J. Webb’s 1857 novel The Garies and Their Friends, was also published in England, with prefaces by Harriet Beecher Stowe and Henry, Lord Brougham (Lord High Chancellor of England). It was the first work of fiction by an African-American author to portray passing, a mixed-race person deciding to identify as white rather than black. It also explored northern racism, in the context of a brutally realistic race riot closely resembling the Philadelphia race riots of 1834 and 1835. Webb published his novel in London, where he and his wife lived between 1856 and 1857.
In 1859—still pre-Civil War—Harriet E. Adams Wilson wrote the first novel by a Black person that was published in the United States, in Boston. She claimed to have written the book with the sole purpose of earning enough money to survive. Our Nig; or Sketches from the Life of a Free Black, In a Two-Story White House North, Showing that Slavery’s Shadow Falls Even There, was largely autobiographical, and most of what scholars know about “Hattie” Wilson is derived from her novel. The story of Our Nig centers around a mixed-race woman in New England, discussing the racism and abuse that went on even in the nominally free states of the North. The publishing world largely assumed her novel to have been written by a white author until scholarship by Henry Louis Gates, Jr proved the author to have been an African American woman.
A recently discovered work of early African-American literature is The Bondwoman’s Narrative, which was written by Hannah Crafts between 1853 and 1860. Crafts was born into slavery in Murfreesboro, North Carolina in the 1830s but escaped to New York around 1857. Her book has elements of both the slave narrative and a sentimental novel. If her work was written in 1853, it would be the first African-American novel written in the United States. The Bondwoman’s Narrative also has the distinction of being the only novel entirely untouched by white editors, presenting the author’s thoughts without being filtered to be palatable to a white audience. The novel was published in 2002.
According to Wikipedia, “The slave narratives were integral to African-American literature. Some 6,000 former slaves from North America and the Caribbean wrote accounts of their lives, with about 150 of these published as separate books or pamphlets. Slave narratives can be broadly categorized into three distinct forms: tales of religious redemption, tales to inspire the abolitionist struggle, and tales of progress. The tales written to inspire the abolitionist struggle are the most famous because they tend to have a strong autobiographical motif. Many of them are now recognized as the most literary of all 19th-century writings by African Americans.”
Frances W. Harper
Frances E. W. Harper(1825–1911), born free in Baltimore, Maryland, wrote four novels, several volumes of poetry, and numerous stories, poems, essays and letters. She was an abolitionist, suffragist, co-founder of the National Association of Colored Women’s Clubs, and the first African American woman to publish a short story. She was also the first woman instructor at Union Seminary in Ohio. Her book Poems on Miscellaneous Subjects, self–published in Philadelphia in1854, sold more than 10,000 copies within three years.
Harriet Jacobs (1813 or 1815 – March 7, 1897), born into slavery in Edenton, North Carolina, was the only woman known to have left writing that documents that enslavement. Her autobiography, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, written by Herself, published in 1861 under the pseudonym Linda Brent, is now considered an “American classic”. For most of the twentieth century, critics thought her autobiography was a fictional novel written by a white author. Jacobs’ autobiography is one of the only works of that time to discuss the sexual oppression of slavery, which led many publishing companies to refuse her manuscript; she finally purchased the plates and had the book printed “for the author” by a printing firm in Boston.
Other African-American writers also rose to prominence in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Charles W. Chesnutt, was a well-known short story writer, novelist, and essayist. He wrote many works dealing with social and racial identity in the American South after the Civil War.
Mary Weston Fordham published a book of poetry in 1897, Magnolia Leaves. She worked as a teacher for the American Missionary Society, and many of her poems contain spiritual themes, as well as references to family and historical events.
Elizabeth Keckley was born into slavery and became a friend of Mary Todd Lincoln and head of the Department of Sewing and Domestic Science Arts at Wilberforce University in Ohio. Her book Behind the Scenes; or, Thirty Years as a Slave and Four Years in the White House, focused her narrative on the incidents that “moulded her character,” and on how she proved herself “worth her salt.” It details her life in slavery, her work for Mary Todd Lincoln and her efforts to obtain her freedom.
W. E. B. Du Bois (1868–1963), in addition to being one of the most prominent post-slavery writers, was also a sociologist, socialist, lecturer, historian, and civil rights activist. In 1903 he published an influential collection of essays entitled The Souls of Black Folk in which he wrote, “The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color-line.” He drew from his personal experience growing up in rural Georgia to describe how African Americans lived within American society. William Edward Burghardt Du Bois completed graduate work at the Friedrich Wilhelm University (Berlin, Germany) and earned a doctorate in philosophy from Harvard University. Du Bois was one of the original founders of the NAACP in 1910.
The Norton Anthology of American Literature (Fourth Edition, Volume 1) spanning the colonial period to the Civil War, includes biographical information and samples of the works by Phillis Wheatley, Harriet Jacobs, and Frederick Douglass. Volume 2, which surveys the years since the Civil War includes biographical information and writing samples from Washington and Du Bois, as well as more than a dozen other Black U. S. writers.
Bottom line: There’s much more to writing by Black Americans than the big name fiction writers (great as they are)!
Today’s blog post was written by Kathleen Corcoran
The term “just friends” makes me grit my teeth every time I hear it. It implies that romantic and sexual relationships are somehow worth more than platonic friends. Friendship is relegated to a consolation prize or afterthought.
An Irish Gaelic word, anamchara, captures the importance of intimate friends in our lives. It means both friend and soul mate. In the Martyrology of Oengus, Brigid of Kildare said, “Anyone without a soul friend is like a body without a head.”
The ancient Greeks agreed. Aristotle defined friends as “A single soul dwelling in two bodies.”
So if friends are the other parts of our souls, why does society (and the media) refer to intimate companions as “just friends”?
Humans are a Friendly Species
The Friendship Cure by Kate Leaver
Since the days of wandering tribes of hunter/ gatherers, homo sapiens have needed to rely on the strength of the community for individual survival.
The benefits start in childhood. People who spent more time with friends as a child are likely to have a lower body mass index and blood pressure as adults.
Being around friends causes humans’ brains to release dopamine, norepinephrin, vassopresin, oxytocin, and serotonin, making people happier, calmer, less stressed, and more likely to survive and recover from difficult situations.
Having intimate friends decreases your chances of developing dementia.
When in proximity to friends or other loved ones, a person’s brain releases fewer stress hormones in response to threats.
People with close friends have lower rates of cardiac disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, and excessive abdominal fat. If they have a heart attack, people who report not feeling lonely are much more likely to survive.
Even the perception of having the emotional and practical support of friends improves the likelihood of a good outcome when a person goes through hard times.
Having friends is even good for your career! According to a Harvard Business Review study, women with strong friendship circles, particularly when those friendship circles are primarily other women, advance more in their careers and earn 2.5 times higher pay.
As Dr. Marisa Franco wrote in Platonic: How the Science of Attachment Can Help You Make-and Keep- Friends, intimate friendships provide people with unique benefits that other relationships cannot. Friends provide emotional support without getting bogged down in decisions about retirement and childcare. Platonic friends have all the intimacy of romantic relationships without the obligation to provide sexual gratification.
Katherine Wu divides love into lust, attraction, and attachment. Intimate friends combine the attraction (dopamine, norepinephrin, and serotonin) of romantic relationships with the attachment (oxytocin and vasopressin) of family relationships without the libido involvement (estrogen and testosterone) of lustful relationships.
Friends provide all sorts of support!
A study by William J. Chopik found that people with strong relationships with friends and with family experience better health and happiness overall. However, at advanced ages, people with intimate friendships have better health even than those with strong family ties. This might be because friendships that last into old age have already withstood the test of time.
Many women experience more intimacy with same-sex friends than they do with romantic partners.
Close friends (and family and romantic partners) develop similar brain-wave patterns when they are together. However, when they part, friends keep those similar patterns longer than they do with familial or romantic intimates.
That’s a lot of brain chemistry and health benefits from people who are “just friends.”
Until recently, most people married for reasons of politics, progeny, or property. According to Stephanie Coontz, author of Marriage, a History: How Love Conquered Marriage, the understanding of marriage as an emotional institution did not arise until the 19th century.
Before then, people much more commonly turned to friends for emotional intimacy and affection. Friends kissed and cuddled each other, slept together, and provided the kind of support that, today, society only condones in romantic relationships.
When his friend Enkidu dies, Gilgamesh mourns him, saying, “My friend Enkidu, whom I loved so dear, who with me went through every danger, the doom of mortals overtook him.”
In the Bible, King David said of his friend Jonathon, “Your love was wonderful to me, passing the love of women.”
When he lived in Springfield, Illinois, Abraham Lincoln had a very close friend named Joshua Fry Speed, with whom he shared a bed and had pillow fights in his pyjamas.
With the rise of women’s suffrage came more female-only spaces, such as women’s colleges, where intimate friendships developed into new traditions and forms of expression.
When a Vassar girl takes a shine to another, she straightway enters upon a regular course of bouquet sendings, interspersed with tinted notes, mysterious packages of “Ridley’s Mixed Candies,” locks of hair perhaps, and many other tender tokens, until at last the object of her attentions is captured, the two women become inseparable, and the aggressor is considered by her circle of acquaintances as — smashed.
The Lord of Montaigne, a Renaissance-era French philosopher even claimed that friendship was so intense and intimate that women could not understand it.
Seeing (to speake truly) that the ordinary sufficiency of women cannot answer this conference and communication, the nurse of this sacred bond: nor seem their minds strong enough to endure the pulling of a knot so hard, so fast, and durable.
John Laurens and Alexander Hamilton detail from The Surrender of Lord Cornwallis by John Trunbull
Letters to friends frequently included language that modern writers would reserve for romantic or sexual partners.
In 1779, Alexander Hamilton wrote to his friend John Laurens, “Cold in my professions, warm in [my] friendships, I wish, my Dear Laurens, it m[ight] be in my power, by action rather than words, [to] convince you that I love you.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson said of his friends, “What is so delicious as a just and firm encounter of two, in a thought, in a feeling?”
So how did people move from intimate companions, romantic friendship, and soul mates to … “just friends”?
Blame Technology
Well, sort of. For most of our history as a species, humans have lived in small communities with strong social networks. During the Industrial Revolution, people moved to cities in droves, where those strong social networks were more difficult to maintain. Instead, people turned for intimacy (as well as child-rearing and basic survival) to romantic partners and connections within the nuclear family.
Friends work together to pull heavy loads.
Until the 1800s, the word “loneliness” did not exist. The closest word in English, “oneliness,” simply meant being without other people, without any negative connotations. A growing consumer economy, research in psychiatry, and a spreading understanding of evolutionary biology emphasized the importance of the individual alone rather than as a member of the community.
The closed doors and relative anonymity of living in a crowd also changed people’s understanding of sexual orientation and intimacy. Victorian ideals of male and female behavior as being opposite and complementary meant that people restricted their opposite-sex friendships for fear of signalling romantic attraction.
At the same time, people restricted their friendships with those of the same sex due to new fears of perceived homosexuality. As Dr. Marisa Franco wrote in Platonic: How the Science of Attachment Can Help You Make-and Keep- Friends, “Our discomfort with affection in friendships coincides with the rise of homophobia as it is expressed today.”
Psychiatrists like Sigmund Freud and Richard von Kraft-Ebbing characterized romance among people of the same gender as a sexual disorder, creating the concept of sexual identity. As historian Lilian Faderman writes in Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers, the turn of the 20th century “was also the beginning of a lengthy period of general closing off of most affectional possibilities between women. The precious intimacies that adult females had been allowed to enjoy with each other earlier — sleeping in the same bed, holding hands, exchanging vows of eternal love, writing letters in the language of romance — became increasingly self-conscious and then rare.”
Homohysteria, the fear of being perceived as being homosexual, drastically curtailed people’s demonstrations of affection and intimacy among their friends. Before the 19th century, society stigmatized people for non-cormforming sexual acts but not for attraction or for non-sexual behaviors. Freud and Kraft-Ebbing, among others, created the modern definitions of sexual identity, which included homophobia.
Today, people are lonelier than ever. People shy away from expressions of intimacy and love with friends lest they be perceived as declarations of romantic or sexual attraction.
Social media technology, despite filling our screens with the activities of friends, can actually make us lonelier. When people use social media platforms to facilitate face-to-face interactions, they report less loneliness and stronger relationships. However, when they replace face-to-face interactions with activity on social media platforms, they report weaker relationships and stronger feelings of isolation. Research tells us that there is no replacement for communicating with or spending time with intimate friends.
Today, on St. Valentine’s Day, I’d like to celebrate all the friendly people reading this. Friends make us happier and less stressed. Friends help us in our careers. Friends keep us healthy and sometimes even keep us alive. Friends make our lives better in innumerable ways. Friends are so much more than “just friends.”
Collective nouns fascinate me, as I’ve mentioned before. I’ve heard a group of starlings called a “murmuration” most often, but I’ve also seen
Murmuration of Starlings in France
A chattering of starlings
A cloud of starlings
A clutter of starlings
A congregation of starlings
A flock of starlings
A scintillation of starlings
In mid-January, a starling showed up at our bird feeder. A week or so later, we saw two. A few days ago, we had a whole clutter of them!
Starlings are boisterous, loud, and they travel in large groups (often with blackbirds and grackles).
Some starling watchers have created a game of finding shapes in the swirling s of flying starlings
Attractive Starlings
Adult European starling feeding a juvenile
Their appearance changes with age and seasons. Young ones are more brown than black.
Starling plumage in summer
In fresh winter plumagethey are brown, covered in brilliant white spots. In summer they are purplish-green iridescent—but not as blue-black iridescent as grackles.
Their legs are officially pink, though I’ve always thought they look more yellow. The bill is black in winter and yellow in summer.
Bigger than chickadees, smaller than blue jays, starlings seem to me to be about the size of cardinals.
Starling plumage in winter
Starlings have diverse and complex vocalizations and have been known to embed sounds from their surroundings into their own calls,including car alarms and human speech patterns. The birds can recognize particular individuals by their calls and are the subject of research into the evolution of human language.
Starlings are active, social birds. Pet starlings notoriously bond closely with their caretakers and seek them out for companionship. Although wild birds, they are easy to tame and keep as pets. Their normal lifespan is about 15 years, possibly longer in captivity.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart kept a pet starling for several years. He may have written his Piano Concerto No. 17 in G, (K. 453) as an adaptation of the bird’s song. When it died, Mozart held an elaborate funeral for it, calling on all the mourners to sing the bird a requiem in procession.
Mozart’s notation of his starling’s song, written in his expense book in 1784, to which he added the note “Vogel Stahrl 34 Kr. … Das war schön!”(Starling’s song, 34 Kreuzer… That was beautiful!)
“Come Here” Starlings
Starling foraging
As the story goes, Eugene Schieffelin—an eccentric pharmacist in the Bronx—was an Anglophile and a Shakespeare aficionado. As deputy of a group whose goals included introducing European species that would be “interesting and useful” and benefit homesick immigrants. Schieffelin, it is believed, latched onto the goal of bringing every bird mentioned in the works of Shakespeare to Central Park, and he zeroed in on the Bard’s single reference to a starling in Henry IV.
HOTSPUR: He said he would not ransom Mortimer, Forbade my tongue to speak of Mortimer. But I will find him when he lies asleep, And in his ear I’ll hollo “Mortimer.” Nay, I’ll have a starling shall be taught to speak Nothing but “Mortimer,” and give it him To keep his anger still in motion.
Henry IV, Part 1 (Act I, Scene 3, Line 228)
However, according to Eugene Schieffelin’s obituary in 1906, he imported starlings for an entirely different reason — to wage war on a particular type of caterpillar that was invading his garden. In fact, researchers at Alleghany College published an article in 2021 arguing that the story of Schieffelin’s obsession with Shakespeare grew out of social and political anti-immigrant sentiments common at the end of the 19th and early 20th centuries.
In any case, starlings are an introduced species to America and have adapted well to urban life, which offers abundant nesting and food sites. It took them just 80 years to populate the continent. They are a ubiquitous, nonnative, invasive species. There are so many that no one can count them—estimates run to about 200 million. Genetic research shows that all of these millions of birds descended from the original 80 or so birds Eugene Schieffelin released in Central Park. They’ve behaved atrociously in their New World.
Despised Starlings
Starlings can damage grass turf as they search for food. While looking for worms, the extremely strong beaks of these birds often damage the root systems of the grasses they pull up. Large flocks can destroy crops in your garden and disturb your newly seeded lawn when the birds feed on seeds and berries.
The US Department of Agriculture officially classifies European starlings as an invasive species. Many biologists despise starlings for their reputed ability to outcompete native birds for food and a limited number of nest sites.
Starling chicks in their crevice nest
They nest in cavities, and each spring they seek crevices in buildings, homes, and birdhouses, as well as holes that have been carved into trees and poles by woodpeckers. They compete for these sites with other cavity nesters, including chickadees, bluebirds and swallows. Because starlings do not have to migrate south for the winter, they are able to claim the best nesting sites before breeding season begins.
This is my major concern: that a clutter of starlings will drive out native Virginia birds currently in our backyard (goldfinch, cardinal, blue jay, tufted titmouse, house finch, blue birds, woodpeckers, chickadee, flicker, wren, brown thrush, even the occasional sharp-shinned hawk and (a few) mockingbirds.
One hopeful possibility: “The evidence that this competition has led to significant population declines is pretty slim, at best,” says Walter Koenig, ornithologist and researcher.
Also, one significant point to remember: starlings thrive in areas that are disturbed by human presence, including dense urban environments, places where more sensitive species cannot survive in the long term. Maybe native birds are simply finding more hospitable locations.
From the same article: “After that crash, officials tested seasoned pilots on flight simulators to see if any could have saved the plane in such a scenario. All failed. In subsequent tests, live starlings were thrown into running engines. It was found that just three or four birds could cause a dangerous power drop.”
Although starlings’ ecological sins might be overstated, their devastating effects on agriculture are beyond doubt.
Starlings damage apples, blueberries, cherries, figs, grapes, peaches, and strawberries. Besides causing direct losses from eating fruits, starlings peck and slash at fruits, reducing product quality and increasing the fruits’ susceptibility to diseases and crop pests. They also lurk around farmyards and lots where they binge on feed in the troughs of cattle and swine.
The US Department of Agriculture counts the devastation as high as $800 million annually. Some researchers estimate that starling cause approximately $1.6 billion of damage to crops and livestock every year.
Dealing with Starlings
The good news is that for the last thirty years or so starling populations have been stable. Every species has a carrying capacity, the number of individuals that can thrive in a given place without exhausting resources, and perhaps starlings are there.
Ecologically, starlings’ presence lies somewhere between highly unfortunate and utterly disastrous.
Starlings are not protected in Virginia or by the federal government, which means that we can remove the starlings and their nests at any time of the year. We might also fill the bird feeders with food they don’t like, block potential nesting sites, and prune trees to deny cover for flocks. If these starlings turn out to be particularly stubborn, we might even play recordings of hawks and predator calls or simply bang pots outside to drive them off.
Bottom Line: Whatever a bunch of starlings are called, they are definitely a nuisance—maybe even a disaster!
Rosy starling (Pastor roseus)Cape starling (Lamprotornis nitens)Violet-backed starling (Cinnyricinclus leucogaster)Emerald starling (Lamprotornis iris)Some variations of starlings have even more flamboyant plumage than the common European starling we see here in North America.
