Easter Eggs

From the earliest days of computer gaming, programmers and designers have been leaving hidden messages or features, for adventurous users to find. These hidden messages, called Easter Eggs, range from dedications, credits, simple buried games, digs at competitors, homages to favorite artists, you name it. Remember the caricaturist Al Hirshfeld? He embedded the word Nina (his daughter) into most of his cartoons, often multiple times. Hitchcock's cameo appearances are another example.

This morning, I found a little easter egg, buried in Colin McEnroe's weekly column: Almonds Of Wrath, And Other Rants. It's kind of sweet. Read the column, it's a good one, about the risks of agricultural monoculture. Something pretty major that we should thinking about. Every so often one of these "we are on the verge of planetary extinction" sticks its head above sea level; Colony Collapse Disorder of commercial bee suppliers is just one of the more recent ones. As Colin points out - none of the political candidates are talking about it.

The easter egg is a sort of a remedy to social monoculture; a reaching out across the void to say "hello". A planting of something different and unexpected in the backyard (or the living room). Like Scout, at the end of To Kill a Mockingbird, surprised to find the mysterious Mr. Radley sitting right there in her house. "Hey Boo!"

There's at least one rooster in my Hartford neighborhood - a few streets of neat single family houses, with a diverse population that has come to this city from many countries. I hear it crowing now and then, while raking leaves or puttering around the yard, and it makes me feel like I might be in rural Vermont instead of the burbs of Hartford. We fret about the rooster being raised for cock-fighting, but really, the rooster's family probably just like having chickens around. Maybe where they come from, you keep a few chickens hanging around, just in case.

Not a bad plan for most of us, I suspect. Not too many roosters, though.