2020 It’s Better to Be Safe

It’s Better to Be Safe

Steven B. Zwickel, 2020

I started thinking about safety last year when I read an article about a study that found wounded soldiers felt less pain as soon as they felt that they were safe. The idea that a psychological sense of safety could lessen the physiological sense of pain really got me to thinking about the importance of feeling safe.

A few months later I had a conversation with a retired US Navy officer who told me how important it was for the captain of a ship to be on the bridge and talking during tense times of battle alerts. It didn’t matter, he said, what the captain talked about for as long as the crew could hear his voice, they felt that they were safe. When the crew felt safe, it could follow procedures without hesitation and accomplish its goals.

When I was a grad student in social work, I remember learning about Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs,   first published in Motivation and Personality in 1954. Maslow’s theory was that people’s behavior is determined by getting their needs met, that those needs form a hierarchy, and the higher level needs can’t be met until the lower level needs are satisfied. If the lower level needs are not met, those become the focus of behavior and people stop worrying about maintenance of their higher level needs. In other words, a person who is dying of thirst, doesn’t bother too much with prestige or self-esteem.

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs model had five levels of needs:

https://www.businessballs.com/self-awareness/maslows-hierarchy-of-needs/

The Hierarchy of Needs

5 Self-Actualization needs - high level fulfillment: realizing personal potential, self-fulfillment, seeking personal growth and peak experiences. 

4 Esteem needs - things that make people feel good about themselves: self-esteem, achievement, mastery, independence, status, dominance, prestige, managerial responsibility, etc.

3 Belongingness and Love needs - affiliation and connections to others: work group, family, affection, relationships, etc.

2 Safety needs - feeling secure: protection from elements, order, law, limits, stability, etc.

1     Biological and Physiological needs - most basic: air, food, drink, shelter, warmth, sex, sleep, etc.

The lower four levels are called deficiency needs. “These arise due to deprivation and are said to motivate people when they are unmet. Also, the motivation to fulfill such needs will become stronger the longer the duration they are denied. For example, the longer a person goes without food, the more hungry they will become.”

McLeod, S. A. (2018, May 21). Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Retrieved from https://www.simplypsychology.org/maslow.html 

The highest level of needs are called Being or Personal Growth needs. Many people don’t feel an urgent need to get these higher level needs met. Sometimes it takes a crisis or major life change to motivate people to try to meet these high level needs.

Safety needs are on Maslow’s second level, but the time has come to re-think the importance of those needs. They belong at the lowest level of deficiency needs.

Safety has become a major issue in the debate over racism in our culture. White people need to have the police ready to respond in order to feel safe. Black people do not feel safe when the police respond. Someone needs to find a middle ground where everyone can feel safe.

In 2020 we are living in a world where it is increasingly hard for people to feel safe. Millions have been thrown out of work. Millions more worry about catching a fatal disease that seems to be out of control. Who can feel safe in a world like this? We have been let down by the individuals and agencies that were supposed to keep us safe.

The failure of our government institutions to keep us safe—from the pandemic, from outside interference in our affairs, from internal strife—is a major malfunction, as Thomas Jefferson put it in the Declaration of Independence: the reason we have a government at all is to keep us safe.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.” 

If the main reason for instituting any kind of government is to protect our rights to life, liberty, and happiness, Jefferson concluded, a government that fails to “secure these rights” should be altered or abolished and replaced by a government that is “most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness”.

_________________________

For another view, see "Hey, America, Grow Up!", David Brooks (Aug. 10, 2023 The New York Times; Section A. p.22) The therapy culture has undermined our maturity. "By, say, 2010, it began to be clear that we were in the middle of a mental health crisis, with rising depression and suicide rates, an epidemic of hopelessness and despair among the young. Social media became a place where people went begging for attention, validation and affirmation — even if they often found rejection instead. Before long, safetyism was on the march. This is the assumption that people are so fragile they need to be protected from social harm."

Photographing wildlife

Photographing wildlife

Steven B. Zwickel

May, 2020

1960 Jimmy the Squirrel

I love taking pictures of the animals I come across in my backyard; I always have. I must have at least a dozen blurry, black-and-white photos of the squirrels my grandmother used to feed table scraps. Whenever I see some animal or bird that we aren’t used to seeing in urban areas, I grab my camera and try to get a few pictures. I have chased wild turkeys down the street and climbed up on a ladder to catch a raccoon sleeping in the crotch of a tree. I think that most of them would be meaningless to anyone who wasn’t present when they were taken, but a few came out well and were added to my photo album. 

Here are some thoughts if you are thinking about photographing birds and other animals in the wild.

How serious are you?

It makes a difference if you are interested in photographing exotic animals on an organized photo safari or just hoping to have a chance encounter with some critter in your own neighborhood. 

If you really want to get great photos and can afford to do so, sign up for a safari led by someone who really knows photography. Prepare for your trip by getting a good camera (read Consumer Reports before you buy) and reading up on the places and learning about the wildlife you are hoping to encounter. (If you shell out enough to go on a safari, you would be foolish not to know the difference between a zebra and an okapi).

That is how the pros do it—the folks who shoot those gorgeous images for magazines like National Geographic. If that’s your dream, go for it. 

I can pass along two things I have learned about how professional nature photographers work, based on an article I read years ago. It was about a photojournalist who’d been following migrating caribou (or elk or some other four-footed beast) for three days and nights. The article said he returned home exhausted with just over 150 rolls of film to be developed. The two things I learned were first, if you really want to shoot pictures of animals in the wild, you need to be ready to live out there with them for extended periods of time. Second, you need to take a LOT of photos {if you are too young to remember film cameras, each roll had 36 exposures and having 150 rolls means the pro took 5400 photographs, of which maybe 4 or 5 would be printed in the magazine.}

Professional photographers also use expensive, high-quality equipment and often carry multiple cameras and lenses. The heavy-duty stuff they carry with them into the bush weighs a lot and can wear a person down in warm climates. 

This is not a cheap hobby. People who go on serious photo safaris are serious about their equipment. If they are into the technology, they can talk your ears off with brand names, ƒ-stops and lens lengths. You may get an interesting reaction by telling them how much you enjoy using your Kodak Instamatic or Polaroid Land Camera.

“This is a squirrel who came right up to the door”

Equipment

You don’t need to know a lot about cameras to get good wildlife photographs and you don't need to spend a fortune on equipment. Any camera or smartphone will work, but there are two things that can make it a lot easier to get a good image. 

White pigeons.

The first is an ability to zoom in on your subject. Single-Lens Reflex (SLR) cameras can be fitted with a telephoto or zoom lens that makes that fox on the far side of the field look much closer and easier to see. These long lenses add a lot of weight to the camera and there’s an easier way to accomplish the same thing. It’s called a teleconverter and it attaches to an SLR camera with your standard lens. Teleconverters are smaller and lighter than the long lenses, but can do a lot of the same things. Consider using a teleconverter rather than a heavy long lens. {Size doesn’t always matter!}

Same photo, but cropped so focus 

is on the girl

The second tool that can help an amateur get better wildlife photos is using a camera that takes multiple shots very quickly—”continuous shooting”  or “burst mode”. Cameras with this feature can take dozens of pictures in just a few seconds. The more photos you take, the more likely you are to get a good one. You will also fill up a memory card very quickly, so use the largest one you can.

Get in close

Even with a zoom lens, you need to get close enough to see what you are taking a picture of. This can be complicated, because most creatures try not to be seen. They are all trying to avoid being caught and eaten by other animals, so they use camouflage, freezing in place, and flight to avoid predators. 

Cooper's Hawk. Coloring makes bird hard

to see  when it is up in a tree

Camouflage makes some animals very hard to see in their natural habitats. Their bodies are the same colors (and often the same pattern) as the background. If they freeze and stand motionless, you won’t even know they are there and they will be hard to make out in your photos. 

The solution to this problem is to control the depth of field—how much of the image is in sharp focus. If you can make the background and foreground blurry, then an animal in the middle ground will stand out. 

Some cameras allow a photographer to alter the depth of field, but many automatically adjust so the entire image is in sharp focus. Depending on your camera, you may have ways to control the depth of field: increase the number of the ƒ-stop to decrease the size of the lens aperture (smaller opening = less light hitting the sensor), decrease the distance from camera to subject (move in close and the camera will focus more on the subject), or use a long lens to increase focal length (similar to moving in closer). If you can’t do any of these with your camera (or don’t want to stop to change settings before the animal moves away), you can change the depth of field using photo editing software. Digital tools that let you “blur background” or otherwise change which part of the picture is in focus after you take the photo are easy to find online.

Wild Turkey at neighbor's house

on a cloudy day

Think about the light

The direction of the light will affect how your photos will look, but you don’t always have a choice. It doesn’t make sense to wait for a cloud to get out of the way or for the sun to move across the sky when you have the opportunity to get a good shot at wildlife. I have read some articles that recommend having the light coming from behind the animal, but that will result in backlighting—if your camera adjusts to the bright background, the subject of the photo will be dark, almost in silhouette and sometimes too dark to make out. So, if you can move to a spot where your subject will be well lit, move. Otherwise, take what you can get and try photo editing software to adjust highlights and shadows to correct backlighting.

Another way many animals avoid being eaten by predators is by being nocturnal—they only come out at night. Taking photos of nocturnal animals is a challenge and it’s really beyond the scope of this article. I suggest you do an online search for “photographing animals at night” to learn more about how to do this.

Where to point the camera

Cranes in an open field on a cloudy day

If you go looking for wildlife to photograph, you need to think about the direction in which you will be shooting.

Taking pictures of birds or other animals up in the trees or on the side of a hill often means pointing the camera up towards the sky. The main advantage of this is that most animals show up beautifully against a bright blue sky. However, this may mean that you will be facing the underside of the animal, which is a lot less interesting than the head and top. It also means that you may find that overhead power lines will be in the way. Of course, shooting images against a bright sky will also result in backlighting, so you will have to compensate for that.

Rabbit in the snow

If you shoot pictures of animals in front of grass/trees/shrubbery you may get some great examples of how hard they are to see with their natural camouflage. This is where you really need to get narrower depth of field so that the animal is in focus and the background is blurrier.

When to take wildlife photos

The natural time to go out to take pictures is when you have time to do so and when the animals are around. That’s why you need to be aware of how things change in the animal world depending on the time of year and time of day. 

Photographers often say that the best time to take pictures is the “Golden hour” at sunrise and sunset when the light is bright enough to see your subject and low enough in the sky to provide the shadows that give photos a sense of depth. {At noon, when the sun is directly overhead, you lose the shadows and images tend to look flatter.} 

Deer in the field

Think about photographing wildlife as the same kind of stalking that hunters practice and which requires a lot of patience. You can bumble around and you might get lucky, but you’ll have a much better chance of getting a good photo if you  put some time and energy into preparation before you set out. A good stalker knows when and where to look; so read up on the birds or animals that live in the area before you go.

Many avid bird watchers and wildlife lovers record their sightings and make them available online. There are websites where you can sign up to receive an email or text alert if a particular bird or animal is spotted in your area.

Raccoon in tree

What’s in the frame?

One way to think about photos of wildlife is to consider the two main types. The first is a photo in which you shoot a stationary animal or shoot at a high speed so that you freeze an animal in action. You will get a clearer photo, but the image will have less information about how the animal moves and lives. Without a sense of action, the photo doesn’t give a viewer much context. In other words, it doesn’t tell much of a story.

Raccoon closeup. People like lookng

at animal's faces.

On the other hand closeup images of an animal’s face and eyes add a lot of  character and make the pictures more interesting to (most) viewers. People tend to anthropomorphize—to read “human” emotions into an animal’s expressions. Thus big eyes are “cute” and pleasing; big teeth are scary. There are advantages to making a wildlife photo that makes humans feel an emotional connection.

Turtle sunning on a rock at noon.

The other type of wildlife photo is one in which the image captures the animal in action, doing something that gives the viewer some insight into how the animal lives. Action pictures may be blurry when the subject moves,  but that motion can make the photo more exciting. Taking action photos means watching them from a distance, and that requires a stable tripod and long lens. The problem is that the photographer has to move the camera when animals move and where they move. That’s tricky, but it can be a lot of fun to get a photo of animals moving in a natural setting. {I still have an image in my memory of a great photo I didn’t take of wild horses running in North Dakota. I just couldn’t move my camera fast enough, so no photo, just a memory of the one that got away.}

The last question to consider is how to orient the camera: is it better to use landscape (horizontal) or portrait (vertical) orientation?

Blackbird: blue sky, but background is too 

busy and distracting.Needs to be cropped 

and background made blurrier.

Landscape orientation is great for getting a photo of the animal’s whole body and background scenery. Portrait orientation is a good way to capture an animal’s face. I try to always take at least one of each type, because you never know which will be the best until you try it. You can also crop a photo to change the orientation if you wish.

I also follow the “Rule of Thirds” of composition whenever I take photos. Many cameras can be set to project a 3×3 grid on the view screen or eyepiece. Positioning the camera so that the most important part of the images is on a point where the gridlines cross makes the composition of photos a lot more interesting.

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Applying the Rule of Thirds to Photography

by Liz Masoner, Your Guide to Photography <photography.about.com>

The rule of thirds is one of the most basic composition guidelines in photography, because it explains what part of an image the human eye is most strongly drawn towards first. 

An imaginary tic-tac-toe board (grid) is drawn across an image to break it into nine equal squares. The four points where these lines intersect are the strongest focal points. The lines themselves are the second strongest focal points. Applying the rule makes photos more interesting. 

2020 Diversity? Sure, mostly. I guess...

Diversity? Sure, mostly. I guess...                           

Steven B. Zwickel    

                   April, 2020    

Samuel J. Abrams made some important points in a July, 2019  NY Times op-ed piece “College Grads, Consider Rural Life.” https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/21/opinion/college-graduates-rural-america.html For a variety of reasons, young college grads want to live in big cities, not in the suburbs or rural areas. I taught undergrads for many years at UW-Madison and have come across the same attitudes about life after college he describes.
     I have another story to share. One of the assignments in my senior-level communication course was for the students to research and write a comparison report on three employers for whom they’d be interested in working after graduation. They were permitted to choose whatever criteria for the comparison they liked, so, in addition to salary, cost of housing, and other criteria, many decided to consider “location” for their reports.      The UW-Madison has long had a well-deserved reputation for a liberal outlook, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise to learn that my students, if asked, would almost certainly claim to be champions of “diversity.” They would insist that they value the contributions of minority group members, don’t discriminate, are unbiased, etc.     To help them research their reports, I would demonstrate in class how to use a variety of websites (such as BestPlaces.net) devoted to comparing demographics of different parts of the country, including things like the cost of living, cost of housing, average snowfall, etc.      We also discussed at length in class the importance of citing credible sources and how to compare “apples to apples.” These are important skills, especially in an age when there is so much misleading information on line. The goal was to have them learn how to use available data from reliable sources to compare things.     The results were interesting and disturbing. When undergrads used location as a criteria in their reports, they often began by explaining that they wanted to live in an exciting “fun” urban setting, which they often described as having clubs, restaurants, artistic venues, and other entertainment opportunities. They followed this by examining population demographics and expressing a strong desire to live where there are more “people my age.”      In other words, they were saying that diversity is fine, as long as the diverse group consists of 20-somethings. They do not see age as a factor in diversity.
At the same time, some of them used education as a sub-criterion under location, because they want to live where there are smart people like them!     After I read and graded their papers, I attempted to demonstrate to them the dissonance between what they said they valued—diversity—and what they actually considered important—living near people like them. I wasn’t sure if they got it, so the following semester I gave the same talk before they wrote their reports, and the results were quite different.     Ageism is insidious, so speak up folks, and don’t let these young whippersnappers get away with hypocrisy!

2020 Walk in the Wild West

Walk in the Wild West                                    

El Paso, Texas

2020

Volunteering to help the children and families at the border - 2020

Volunteering to help the children and families at the border 

Steven B. Zwickel                                     

March, 2020

                                                
Like many people (I think) I was rattled by the news reports and pictures during the summer of 2019 about the “detention centers” the US was operating at the Mexican border to hold refugees. (Yes, they are refugees, not migrants, not “foreign invaders”, not “illegals”—they are people seeking refuge from poverty, corrupt governments, and murderous gangs). 

To me, these “detention centers” are the equivalent of concentration camps—not for killing people, like the Nazis did—but for “interning” them until something else??? is done with them.

• The whole idea of concentration camps horrifies me. 
• Concentration camps holding children is worse.
• Concentration camps holding children in the United States is the most terrible thing I can imagine.

So I couldn’t let this go. I couldn’t stand by and watch it happen. I couldn’t see it as someone else’s problem. I had to do something.

We are not wealthy enough to make big donations to the organizations working to help the people at the border, so I had to find another way to help. We have a large bed of many different types of hosta plants growing in our front yard and that gave me a way to raise money for charity. I dug up some of the hostas and divided them  into smaller plants. Over Labor Day weekend, when my neighborhood has its annual garage sale days, I set up hostas in my driveway and gave away a plant to anyone who agreed to make a donation to one of the charities. They had to send the money directly to the organizations, so I don’t know how much I raised. I gave away more than 70 plants, so if each person donated $10 that would be a good sum.

That felt good, but this situation at the border is personal for me. Too many members of my family were sent to concentration camps and never came out. Three of my granddaughters are Latinas and my son’s partner is a Mexican national. And taking children away from their parents was tearing my heart.

I wished I had a lot of money to donate, but I didn't. All I had was time and a strong desire to help. My first idea was to try to go to the border over winter break—from mid-December to mid-January—to see if I could volunteer to help out. Then I realized that holiday time was probably not the best time to go, so I considered taking a leave of absence for the spring, 2020 semester. Since I turned 70 in December and was thinking of retirement, I decided to retire in January and then I would have time to volunteer. 

I have a law degree (admitted to NY Bar, but have not practiced in many years and have no training in immigration law), an MS in social work, and a diploma in graphic arts/printing. I have taught writing and speaking skills in college and to teenagers in China. I was also licensed by Wisconsin to be a family day care provider. Unfortunately, my Español is not very good. 

On January 2, 2020 I retired after 27 years of teaching at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and two weeks later I was on a plane to Texas. My plan was to spend two months in El Paso volunteering to work for several different agencies. I paid my own way—airfare, hotel, rental car, meals, etc. My trip was more or less successful.

I passed the background check and for the Diocesan Migrant and Refugee Services, Inc. (DMRS) I developed a series of presentations on the situation at the border and what DMRS is doing to help adults and children. I also created a simulation game to demonstrate what happens to people who try to get lawful residence status in the US and wrote a 17-page glossary of terms related to US Immigration. After my return to Madison, I redesigned an informational brochure for DMRS.

I was accepted as a volunteer for Ciudad Nueva Community Outreach Middle School Program but after I got to El Paso they decided that they didn’t need more volunteers. 

I did get to work for Abara Frontiers sorting out piles of donated articles, writing a profile of a staff member, visiting three migrant shelters in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, and participating in one of their border encounter groups. 

I went through background checks and Pro Bono Attorney Orientation, but was unable to be part of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS) program in El Paso-Juárez because they couldn’t arrange for an interpreter. 

Two other opportunities didn’t pan out. I interviewed with Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center, which provides legal services to asylum-seeking parents who are separated from their families. The Las Americas volunteer coordinator said they might be able to use me to do intake interviews and to help them create a list of area resources to which they could refer clients. But then I got an email telling me that there wasn't a “pressing need right now for some of the volunteer ideas we discussed unfortunately.” 

Episcopal Father Jose Juan Bernal talked to me about teaching English to people from Central America living in shelters in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico. He was very enthusiastic about the idea, but a few days later, in a phone call, he admitted he was concerned about my safety and he wouldn't be able to work directly with me for at least two weeks. I explained my situation to him, about spending a lot of money to be here, etc. He said he understood and seemed sincerely disappointed. 

While I was in Texas, the University managed to mess up my retirement plans, resulting in an endless series of emails and phone calls between Madison and El Paso. By mid-February I had reached the limit of what I could do in El Paso and, because of the retirement snafus, I decided to cut my trip short and return to Madison in mid-March.

I learned a lot during my time in El Paso and I think I am still processing it. I kept track of where I went and what I did. I sent emails describing my experiences, with photos, to a list of more than 50 people who had expressed an interest in getting them. (An expanded and edited version of the collected emails can be found online at: https://bit.ly/2TCqxGR Please feel free to share it with anyone.)

To summarize what I got from my time at the border:

We don’t know what we want in an immigration policy. Like many other countries, we are struggling to find a rational way to figure out who should be allowed in and who should not. As a result, US immigration laws are a mess and they will remain a mess until Congress does something, so don’t hold your breath.

The immigration process continues to be racist and biased against non-whites and non-Christians. People all over the world consider us hypocrites for claiming to believe in diversity and equality.

The root of the immigration problem is drugs. If Americans stopped craving heroin and cocaine, the gangs that are terrorizing people in Central America would go broke. Without cash, no bribery and corruption, no guns, no caravans of people fleeing for their lives. As long as the people in Central America feel unsafe, they are going to keep on coming.

The “Remain in Mexico” policy is inhumane and has made a humanitarian crisis much worse. People in shelters in Mexico (almost all from other parts of central and south America, not Mexico) are living in dire poverty and have become easy targets of criminals who take what little they have.

Many people have asked me what they can do to help. I have three suggestions.

• The situation of the people living in shelters in Mexico is dire. This is a humanitarian crisis, so consider donating money to one of the groups that is trying to help them. This is a short-term solution; keeping them in these shelters is not a sustainable, long-term solution. 

• The people in the shelters in Mexico and in the US are waiting for judges to review their applications for asylum to determine whether they deserve to get visas. The process is slow—too many cases, too few lawyers, not enough attorneys ready to represent the applicants. Consider donating to one of the organizations that provides legal representation to asylum seekers.

• Vote. Vote against candidates who take a strong anti- or pro-immigration stance—the only way any progress will ever be made is if politicians are willing to compromise. Electing all-or-nothing candidates will result in a continuation of an immigration system that isn’t fair and doesn’t work. Don’t vote for anyone who offers “simple solutions”. They are either ignorant or pandering. Do vote for candidates who support conversation, debate, and negotiation.