This is an update to my post from lasts night on Ray Bradbury’s short story, “I See You Never.” My wife, Sena, happened to mention the naturalization process in the U.S. today.
In fact, we both saw the televised naturalization ceremony at the Iowa State Fair of 2024. During that ceremony, 47 children became citizens. In fact, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services has held a celebratory naturalization ceremony at the Iowa State Fair for at least the last ten years.
There was just such a ceremony last month of 69 immigrants at the University of Northern Iowa.
I had a quick peek at the U.S. citizenship and civics test questions and I’m pretty sure I would have a lot of trouble passing it. I’d probably get shipped back to Mars—which Ray Bradbury wrote a lot about.
The naturalization process isn’t easy. Under federal law, you have to live here in the U.S. at least five years as a lawful permanent resident to be eligible for naturalization, three years if you’re the spouse of a U.S. citizen. You have to learn the language. Many other countries have a similar naturalization process.
There’s no exact number of the USCIS naturalization ceremonies per year, but 818,500 took part in 2024.
Many of those who go through the naturalization process think it’s unfair for others to bypass it by getting into the country by other means.
So, I guess that’s the other side of the short story—the one Ray Bradbury probably didn’t write.
A couple of days ago we made our usual spring trip out to the Terry Trueblood trail. The phlox and grasses waved in the breeze and we saw quite a few birds.
There was also a swarm of killer midges or gnats that attacked us. They ambushed us when we got close to the trees on the western side of the trail.
We couldn’t really see them so much as feel them dive-bombing our eyes and ears, marching through our hair and looking for blood vessels.
What did we expect? We were walking around Sand Lake close to the trees and that’s where the gnats are. I couldn’t hold a camera still long enough to film anything because I was too busy flailing at the bug swarm. Swatting at gnats is a tricky business if you wear eyeglasses—you’re liable to slap them off your head on to the cement trail. I’ve done that.
We retreated in abject defeat in full rout away from the trees and were ready to surrender, head back to the car and leave. But the further away we fled, the gnats dissipated. We took a new direction, the opposite of the one we usually take around the trail.
This led to an adventure that we might not have otherwise had. We would not have encountered the family of killdeer with their stilt-legged babies crisscrossing the parking lot and other wonders. It reminded me of the Out of the Woods song (“Optimistic Voices”) in The Wizard of Oz:
You’re out of the woods
You’re out of the dark
Away from the flies
Step into the sun
Escaping the gnats dive-bombing your eyes
Keep straight ahead for the least buggiest place
Off your face the crap from swarming flies
Hold onto to your breath
Hold onto your nose
Hold onto your ears
Stop breathing in gnats and run like crazy…
And then the action picked up along the less wooded section of the trail. People were fishing along the lake’s edge, although I don’t understand how they tolerated the bugs unless they bathed in Deet before arriving.
We never got so many video clips; in fact, we ran the camera battery nearly empty. If we hadn’t taken a different path, we’d have missed the show.
The first picture I took was something Sena thought was interesting far out on Sand Lake. I thought it was a rock, but after we got home and looked at the clip closely, it was a group of three turtles jostling for room on top of a small rock. They could have been fighting or mating; it was hard to tell. There’s a moral in there somewhere.
I think some birds like orioles and redwing blackbirds like the sensation of being blown back in the wind while they perch on slender tree branches. They don’t get motion sickness.
There were several birds on a utility wire which were difficult to identify because of the angle of the sun. It would probably remind some of Leonard Cohen’s song “Bird on The Wire.”
One brief highlight was the aerial “dogfight” between two male goldfinches, probably about territory or females. They were little more than a yellow blur on video whaling away on each other in the air.
The comedy act of the day was the killdeer family farting around the parking lot, crossing and recrossing the streets. We made video of it that you can see in a different post.
The tree swallows were doing their usual aerial acrobat routines and there were probably babies in the nest boxes. A brilliant tree swallow appeared. I’m pretty sure it was a male because of the beautiful blue-green feathers. I think I caught a clip of a female as well. The color of the feathers were more muted.
Go Retire Psychiatrist 