The Butterfly Flapped Its Wings and Amazingly, Forty Years Later…

I went for a walk. And then I saw one…and then another…they were everywhere! Monarch butterflies were flitting and flying all around the neighborhood. There weren’t any there yesterday but now I could see at least 20.

Where did they come from? Did they just hatch?

I started thinking of the 8” think dictionary my family had at the top of the stairs in my house where I grew up, and the three feet of shelf space each that the Encyclopedia Britannica, World Book and Book of Knowledge took up in our family library. Forty years ago, I was equally curious then about how certain words should be spelled and where things like Monarch butterflies came from, but my intellectual pursuits back then usually followed this pattern…

“Mom…How do you spell 'mnemonic'?”

“Go look it up in the dictionary,” my mom would reply.

So I would trudge up the stairs, open the big book to “N” and look for “nemonic.” Of course the monstrous dictionary didn’t put a little red squiggle under the word when I looked it up in the wrong place, nor did it suggest “mnemonic.” If I didn’t find the word right away I was less likely to try and satisfy intellectual curiosity the next time.

Using the encyclopedias back then was usually more productive – assuming my brothers put back each of the volumes the last time they used them.

But this is 2007. While I walked, I pulled out my Treo phone, logged into Google, and searched for “Monarch Butterfly.”

Wow! While I was still walking among these little delicate creatures, I discovered:

* Monarch’s migrate as much as 3,000 miles flying South for Winter and North in the Spring
* They are poisonous snacks for predators and are brightly colored to make sure predators know they aren’t the yummy ones

So these butterflies didn’t just hatch today – they literally “blew into town” and miraculously, could travel many miles a day while seemingly flitting about.

What a great time we live in when we can easily learn things just in time and on the spot! To the three R’s standard when I grew up – Reading, wRiting and aRithmetic, we should add two more:
4. Reach – connecting with people through email & postings, and
5. Research – easy, fast, productive searches to a wealth of information and resources

Has your life changed with Reach and Research?

John Stuppy, john@tutorvista.com