To really master a subject, you should know it well enough to teach it.  Given that, I find that a good measure of a successful dabble is - do you know it well enough to teach it to a 6 month old?  Coincidentally, I have a 6 month old living in my house at this moment!  Meet my grand-daughter, Leona - a willing (aka "captive") audience for this lesson in Avian Anatomy (a topic suggested by her other grandmother, Karla.)  

After this afternoon's crash course, Leona could confidently point out the cranium, cervical vertibrae, scapular, tibia, fibula, and furcula (though she may opt for "wish bone"), carpals, metacarpals and phalanges.  It is equally possible that she might perform a taste test on this diagram, and then drool in an adorable way.  The important thing here is that, in absorbing the knowledge in a deep enough fashion to share it with another, I am more likely to retain it myself.  Have I now MASTERED the field of Avian Anatomy? Absolutely not.  As dabblers, we are free to explore without the pressure to master.  Likewise, we are at liberty to veer off our initial path to follow our curiosities as they unfold - which is what landed me atop the Times Square Building in the previous post.  

For the sake of demonstration purposes, I have kept this particular dabbling journey relatively short - just offering an example of what may happen when we turn our dabbling attentions toward a topic of interest, or an activity, or a new skill.  If I were to stay with this subject, I might:

1. go birdwatching
2. build a bird skeleton out of toothpicks
3. consider how their internal organs relate to their food choices, flight, song, etc.
4. research the mechanics of flight, and drift off into learning more about Amelia Earhart and Nellie Bly
5. visit a nearby farm and hang out with the chickens
6. challenge people to wishbone duels until I win and get my wish
7. go hang-gliding (ok, that might be my wish...)
8. get sidetracked by the passing thought of cuckoos and cuckoo clocks and the Black Forest of Germany and (... sorry, I'm back.  Just spent some time chasing links related to the original cuckoo clocks and the fact that "The mechanism to produce the cuckoo call was installed in almost every kind of cuckoo clock since the middle of the 18th century and has remained almost without variation, until the present." (Wikipedia.) (Huh.)
9. interview someone who actually knows about avian anatomy (most experts LOVE to talk about what they LOVE.)
10. learn about the kinds of birds who live right near me, and find out what kind of food/housing support would be most beneficial to them.
11. read a book on John James Audubon.  
12. etc.

In fact, I may go do one of those things now.  How about you?  

My dabbling in Avian Anatomy continued with an urge to reach out to someone who just might have some knowledge in the field.  A few years ago, I friended someone on Facebook after another friend had posted one of his photos which I greatly admired.  Since then, I have enjoyed a stream of spectacular shots posted by Paul Babb - mainly of birds, but other nature scenes as well.  In fact, one of his photos is currently serving as my computer background screen.

I wrote to Paul and asked if, given his obvious interest in birds, he had any knowledge of bird anatomy - whether it might inform his work.  I am quoting his response below:

"Hi Wendy, interesting question.  I had to think about it a bit to come up with an answer.  When I was in college in the mid '70's I was a biology major.  Probably most of my focus was on the human body, but I did do some other biology stuff.  I took a class that I totally enjoyed on birds, a field class that mostly worked on identification.  A bit later I got a chance to get pretty much in on the ground floor of a group of people, led by a local Vet that was concerned with the huge decline in populations of the Peregrine Falcon.  This group wanted to figure out a way to captive breed Peregrines to try and rebuild the population.  We started off trying to breed another falcon, the Sparrow Hawk (kestrel) since there were lots of those.  DDT had pretty much wiped out the peregrine.  We started out slow but eventually learned what the Kestrel needed to reproduce and then the work turned to Peregrines.  About that time I finished college and moved on to other things but the Santa Cruz Predatory Research group kept going and became really successful and eventually bred and released into the wild many, many Peregrines.  They also did some work with eagles and other predatory birds.  I guess from these experiences is where I got the passion to watch birds, especially predatory birds.  That's also why I got so excited lately when I started to actually find Peregrines in the wild, something that would not have happened in the 70's.  I can't help but think that in a tiny way I helped with the return of this bird.  The Santa Cruz  Predatory Research Group still exists today.  Then of  course, by watching falcons I am also noticing all the other birds and found it really fun to get the best pictures I can of all of them.  I have not really spent much time on anatomy, but more focused on behavior.  I like to see how they hunt, how they forage for food, their breeding behaviors  etc.  So, I guess the answer to your question about avian anatomy being a factor, not really... my passion is more about getting out there and watching them do their daily things and especially predatory birds are the ones that get me really excited!  Hope this helps."

Oh, it helps, Paul.  I have now spent the past few days hanging around on Peregrine Falcon sites.  As someone living not too far from Rochester, NY, I have been particularly enthralled with the chance to watch a live feed video of a falcon's nest at RFalconCam.  Their first two eggs of the season JUST HATCHED yesterday!  If I hadn't been drawn into dabbling in Peregrine's, I would never have known about the Peregrine Project in Rochester, and would have completely missed this beautiful event.  As it turns out, since 1998, 49 young falcons have fledged from Rochester nests.  Whoop!  Whoop!

And so I dabble on...  Be sure to click over and check out Paul Babb's captivating photos (including the 2 on this page) at:  https://plus.google.com/u/0/100993593817697324416/posts

This week, I posed a challenge to friends on Facebook to suggest a topic for dabbling.  I would then blog about my experience with dabbling in the chosen topic as a kind of "case study" for anyone who might be curious how this whole dabbling thing works.  

So, here we are.  The topic is: Avian Anatomy (thanks to Karla Bird for the suggestion.)  Before we plunge into the dabbling demonstration, it is important to make note of a few dabbling truths:

1. There is no one way to dabble.  In fact, there are an infinite number of paths available to any given dabbler exploring any given interest.  These paths may or may not return you to the topic that you set out to explore, but the desire will keep you adventuring forward in ways that continue to satisfy.  

2. Unless you LOVE to write reports, I give you permission to leave the need to be able to summarize your findings in a tidy package behind.  

3. For anyone who thinks that you don't have time to dabble, please note that I worked two jobs (10 hours) and filled out my daughter's FAFSA form before squeezing in these few minutes.  I'm tired, my brain is just a wee bit fried, and I'm about to dive into Avian Anatomy - a topic I've always been eager to explore (as of about 10 minutes ago.)

And so it begins...

I begin the way that EVERYONE does now - by Googling "Avian Anatomy."  I quickly scan the top links highlighted by Google until my eyes trip over the words "graphically intense."  Adding to the magnetic quality of these words is the name of the site on which the intense graphics are housed: Feisty Feathers (found at http://feistyhome.phpwebhosting.com/anatomy.htm.)  So, I click on it, and sure enough, there are graphically intense birds dancing on a highwire, along with some drawings of the insides of birds.  Fair enough.  But as my fried brain becomes fixated on the hypnotically dancing birds, I find myself wondering what other search engines there are, and whether they might have a different set of sites to peruse.

So, I Google "search engines" and am immediately delighted to discover a site called, "DuckDuckGo" (https://duckduckgo.com/) - which is clearly a sign!  A search engine for dabblers!!  Quickly scanning down the sites tagged by a search of Avian Anatomy, I am lured onto a page titled "Beauty of Birds" (http://www.beautyofbirds.com/anatomy.html) which does not disappoint as it offers me an immediate possibility of learning cool new vocabulary words with which to impress my friends.  BONUS POINTS: FRENCH WORDS to impress my FRENCH FRIENDS!  (See Morphologie Externe d'un Oiseau)  And the thrills just continue as I scroll further down and see a whole section on Drinking Behavior (did I mention that it's been a long day?)

Here, I will collapse time a bit for you to say that my initial "research" for the evening landed on a highly academic paper in the nation's oldest college science publication, Yale Scientific Magazine, titled "Unraveling the Mysteries of Duck Mating."   Truthfully, the article made me blush.  Really.  Wow.  I'll just say, it involves "large corkscrew phalluses" and spiraling vaginal tracts...  Huh.  Didn't see that coming.  

Stay tuned...  the Case Study continues.

The feedback I've received from others has been both positive and instructive.  Every day, I have tweaked, redesigned, added and deleted to make this site more accessible to visitors.  I think it's a better site now than it was when I launched a few days ago.  And it will be even better a few more days from now.

The feedback I've received from myself, however, has had to be monitored closely for tone, content, usefulness and truthfulness.  Nothing worse than being your own troll.  Every day, many times a day, I've halted a downward spiral internal conversation to remind myself that the whole point of doing this is because I actually BELIEVE in this mission - to provide an alternative voice to the relentless insistence that every human has ONE passion, and that it is our purpose to discover and live it.  Dabbler University encourages the rest of us who have MANY interests to embrace that reality and to find purpose in exploring them all.  And the other reason that I'm doing this is because - it's fun.  So be quiet, troll.

Earlier today, as I was staring at the screen thinking about what to do next, a post from one of my favorite photo bloggers - Brandon Stanton of Human's of New York - popped onto my Facebook feed.  The woman in the photo (above) is quoted as saying: "I wasn't lucky enough to have ever found what I wanted to do. Don't get me wrong-- I did nicely. But I never found my passion."  It was like she was talking to me.  She's definitely LOOKING right at me.  And that knowing smile beats that doubting troll anytime.  

First post on a fresh blog in a brand new website.  No pressure.  It's like buying that really beautiful journal with the leather-tooled cover, opening it to the first page, picking up that new chiseled-tip pen, and spending the next minutes, hours, days, months dismissing every thought as UnWorthy - which is why all the "real" writers suggest cheap spiral notebooks and a Bic pen.  Good news!  This blog is the equivalent of a throwaway notebook in that I have no aspirations to become a BLOGGER.  Instead, I will simply dabble in blogging here.  

In looking ahead, I imagine this page being my own space for fulfilling #6 in the Guideposts for Dabbler section of the iDOD, while modeling a willingness to immediately depart from that expectation as other ideas and experiences waft me in other directions.  I do hope, at the very least, however that this page serves as a nudge for my fellow Dabblers, and a forum in which all of us can begin to recognize a sense of community - AND that you all will be so curious as to what #6 is, that you will go back and buy that textlet so that you can get the most out of your time at Dabble University.