COWS, FLOWERS AND WATER DO IT

Read on the Internet: “Farmers have long been trying to get cows to produce more milk. Finally, this year, scientists at England's Newcastle University gave us a solution: talk to the animals.

“Researchers Peter Rowlinson and Catherine Douglas studied the practices at 500 dairy farms and found that cows with names produced one to two pints of milk more a day than cows that weren't given names.

“‘Even if a herdsman gave a cow a number instead of a name, that cow just seemed to be more agitated around milking time,’ said Rowlinson. ‘It just seems that cows with names are happier cows.’ [Now the use of the word “agitated” must signify a positive happening, not a negative one, which I think is what happens when I get agitated.]

But it’s not only cows that are getting happy. I know that for a long time people have thought plants grow better if you talk to them.

Back in 1848 there was a German academic, Gustav Fechner, who believed that plants, like people, had emotions and the best thing you could do for your plants was to give them lots of verbal attention. He wrote a book about the soul-life of plants. And even Luther Burbank, who worked wonders with plants, wrote in one of his books that plants may not understand the spoken word but they were capable of telepathically understanding the meaning of speech. Without trying to be negative, I must say I know Thomas Edison had some loopy ideas about how our bodies work, and I think I might put these people right up there beside ol’ Edison.

And I’m sure all of you have heard of Dr. Masaru Emoto who teaches that saying nice words to water will make it happy and saying bad words to it will make it sad. (That is the nonbeliever’s synthesis of his work; there truly are a lot of believers, but I’m not one of them.) All I can say is that I feel the same way when spoken to nicely.

Now for 2010 I propose that we all talk nice to everybody and everything, whether we believe these guys or not. It may or may not have the same effect it has on cows and flowers and water, but we’ll probably feel better about ourselves if we do. We may end up being called a Pollyanna, but don’t worry about that. Better that than being called a nut case!