Pay Dirt!

So, I thought I had been relegated to the Evanston Community Gardens' waiting list, but yesterday I got an email saying I could get a 400 sq. ft. plot in James Park. Finally!! a place to grow some vegetables! It really doesn't have anything to do with saving money, or even eating home-grown vegetables (well, that's a big part of it) it's more just getting to get out there and grow our own food. To plant and weed and watch. I love looking at a garden I've planted. I can just sit there staring for hours. So anyway, happy day!

The older I grow, the less important the comma becomes. Let the reader catch his own breath.
- Elizabeth Clarkson Zwart

Falcon Cam

Check out the Evanston Library's Falcon Cam. This is the fourth year in a row Peregrine Falcons have nested at the library.

Ireland looks nice

Baseball!!

I think this is the first time I've really been excited about the start of Major League Baseball since the late 80's early 90's. You know, when ALL my favorite players were so jacked up on steroids I was completely duped into believing they were Gods! Oh and there was a strike and free agency and all the luster just rubbed right off. But I'm back! Why? Well, the Cubs, Wrigley Field, and Fantasy Baseball. The first year we were in Chicago was the dreaded 2003 series. Well, even though the Cubs (and one of their fans) snatched defeat out of the jaws of victory, I had a good time watching a "home" team do well. But then there was a steady decline and last year was abysmal. I went to a few games and watched them lose each one. I watched Greg Maddux pitch a gem only to see Ryan Dempster give up a walk off home run to Mike Piazza! Uuugh. But as someone said, "spring hopes eternal." And this spring we have a new coach and two possible MVP candidates in Derrick Lee and Alfonso Soriano. I watched Soriano last year quite a bit. He is amazing! When the Cubs signed him I was elated. And even though I am a new Cubs fan I have eternal hopes for this team. And hopefully I'll get to see them actually win a game in person! If not I may be banned from Wrigley for the jinx that I am!

Thunderstorms on the High Plains!

Just snapped this pic off my computer. I miss those storms!

COOOOORMAAAAAAAAC MCCAAAAAAARRRTHYYYYYY!!!!

So, the world apparently is coming to an end. Cormac McCarthy's book The Road is now on Oprah's Book Club! My gut reaction was one of retching and nausea. One of my heroes was going to be on Oprah??? Huh?? Whaaaa??? This is a man who has done ONE print interview. A man who wouldn't give paid speaking engagements when he was living in a shack eating beans from a can. A man who says "let the work speak for itself." Oprah? Interview? So after the however many stages of grief I've quickly come to acceptance. This could be his second National Book Award (he's one of the five nominees) and he will now sell millions of books and be read by a whole new audience. I am a snob. Like one of those people who were in some seedy club in Seattle when Nirvana played to just me and a few others and when they made it big I yelled that "I was here first!!!" I think The Road is an important book; one that SHOULD be read by as many people as possible.

Quote o' the Day

"If the crib's on fire, you don't speculate that the baby is flame retardant. You take action." -- Al Gore testifying in front of Congress today

Brown-headed Cowbirds

Cowbirds go 'mafia' to pawn off eggs

March 7, 2007
BY RANDOLPH E. SCHMID
WASHINGTON -- Raise my kids, or else!

People have long wondered how cowbirds can get away with leaving their eggs in the nests of other species, who then raise the baby cowbirds. Why don't the hosts just toss the strange eggs out?

Now researchers seem to have an answer -- if the host birds reject the strange eggs, the cowbirds come back and trash the place.

The so-called ''Mafia behavior,'' by brown-headed cowbirds is reported in this week's online edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.


Southern Illinois research
''It's the female cowbirds who are running the mafia racket at our study site,'' said Jeffrey P. Hoover, of the Florida Museum of Natural History and the Illinois Natural History Survey.
''Our study shows many of them returned and ransacked the nest when we removed the parasitic egg,'' he explained.

Hoover and Scott K. Robinson of the Florida museum studied cowbirds for four seasons in the Cache River watershed in southern Illinois.

When they removed the eggs cowbirds left in warbler nests, 56 percent of the time the nests were later ransacked.

AP

from Poetry Daily

What Is Left Behind

We used to pick cicada shells off bark and chain-link fences,
move them to our shirts—half-fascinated, half-horrified
by the air-swelled eyes and barbed hook-feet—

the horror of possibility. We weren't scared then to pinch them,
hear them crunch between our fingers, the violent crackles
of more than dry leaf, flecks of membrane

stuck to the skin of our thumbs, the bulbous eyes gone.
We never studied the skeletons' wingless shapes,
didn't put our mouths close, moisten the ghost-bodies

with our breath, even tongues, to see if they tasted sweet
like burnt sugar, to see if we too could breathe life
into lifelessness, make the head turn, the legs claw.

But we've learned there were careful steps
that pulled fresh bodies, green-bellied with leaf-veined wings,
through slits and left the shells behind, still malleable,

the adults soft beside, wings hardening to flight,
the shell drying too. We knew nothing of process,
only that something had happened and left a fragile shape.


Bronwen Butter Newcott
Prairie Schooner
Fall 2006

2 AP Headlines Today

Bombers massacre Iraq Shiite pilgrims (AP)

Bush claims fresh progress in Iraq (AP)

Black-headed Gull

Maggie and I ran down to see a Black-headed Gull that had been seen in Montrose Harbor.

You can check out more shots from Rob Curtis at his website The Early Birder

Peregrine Falcon

Here is a picture of a Peregrine Falcon eating a gull on the frozen Lake Michigan shoreline taken by Chicagoan Mike Green. Check out some more of his photos.

Meme

What was your favorite toy growing up?
I guess when I think of toys I see GI Joes and Tranformers. My favorite was the Transformer who turned into a microscope. But the only toy that I still have is a Teddy Bear. I remember thinking if I had him with me I couldn't be hurt.

What was the first curse-word you remember learning?
I first learned curse words at school. I never repeated them. I remember getting in trouble for saying "butthead" so I guess that was my first curse word.

When did you learn there wasn't a Santa Claus?
I remember my Aunts telling me and how I said I didn't believe them, but I did.

Did you have any pets when you were a kid?
Many. I had a baby raccoon named Lulu. She got big and mean. I always caught lizards and snakes and turtles and kept them in aquariums during the summer and then let them go in the fall. I had birds and hamsters. My parents raised coonhounds, show fox terriers and miniature schnauzers and greyhounds so we had more dogs than I could count, but the inside dogs (or pets) were usually fox terriers and schnauzers. Schotzey and Billy were our longest lived and most loved pets.

Where did the monster in your bedroom live?
I remember being scared at night, but usually of nothing in particular.

American Gothic

Took my students to to the Art Institute to practice their fieldsite visits on Wednesday. I was disappointed that Picasso's Old Guitarist was in the special collection. Of course it was because it was free to get in all month. Anyway, here's a blurry, crappy phone pick of Wood's famous painting. I am not particularly attached to this painting, but it is a treat to see it close up.

Michelangelo's Moses

"Michelangelo felt that this was his most life-like creation. Legend has it that upon its completion he struck the right knee commanding, "now speak!" as he felt that life was the only thing left inside the marble. There is a scar on the knee thought to be the mark of Michelangelo's hammer."

This sculpture is right up there with the Pieta and David for me. I have to get to Italy before I die!

Amorphophallus rivieri

The Lincoln Park Conservatory has a rank flower blooming. Check out the Devil's Tongue.

Weather Blog

Check out Tom Skilling's Weather Blog. He's the meterologist at WGN. Huge nerd, but he loves the weather and you can tell.

An odd Skilling fact is that he is Jeffrey Skilling's older brother.

This American Life

This American Life on Showtime looks like it's going to be good!

The Big Book of Irony

Goldbarth's Toys

Take a look at the article about Albert Goldbarth's collection over at the Poetry Foundation's site.

Thanksgiving

Mom and Dad and Maggie

Me and Dad

Maggie and Mom

Dad

Chickens

I was going to post these pics from last Thanksgiving, but I forgot. So here they are!

Helix Nebula

Wow

Brain Exercise

Brain Exercise

Soon there will be brain gyms. They might call them libraries.

Dot

You bet Jurassic it did!

Henry Wu: You're implying that a group composed entirely of female animals will... breed?

Dr. Ian Malcolm: No, I'm simply saying that life, uh... finds a way.

ugh

I can't believe we have to pass legislation to outlaw this.

Stadium Pal

Suburbanites

We are almost done unpacking. Soon normalization will reign!! Evanston is yuppiville, but with yuppiville come things like curbside recycling!!!, a yard, a basement with a work bench, community gardens, and a coffeeshop, thai place, grocery stores, homemade pizza, blind faith cafe, and more all within walking distance (well, if it wasn't below zero all of the time!) Our landlord is very hands off. Our upstairs neighbors used the term "slum lords." Whatever. It is snowing right now and I can't wait to get out there and shovel the sidewalk! I actually bought some de-icer! I like having some stake in how the place looks and runs. I guess I want to be a homeowner. Next purchase, composter. If only we could have a chicken coop!

If anyone is looking for any gift ideas!

Quote of the day

Thank God men cannot as yet fly and lay waste the sky as well as the earth!
- Henry David Thoreau

Poem o' the Day

Riprap

Lay down these words
Before your mind like rocks.
placed solid, by hands
In choice of place, set
Before the body of the mind
in space and time:
Solidity of bark, leaf or wall
riprap of things:
Cobble of milky way,
straying planets,
These poems, people,
lost ponies with
Dragging saddles --
and rocky sure-foot trails.
The worlds like an endless
four-dimensional
Game of Go.
ants and pebbles
In the thin loam, each rock a word
a creek-washed stone
Granite: ingrained
with torment of fire and weight
Crystal and sediment linked hot
all change, in thoughts,
As well as things.

--Gary Snyder

Bugs

What's Opera Doc?

Weather Map

My new favorite weather map.

Wishing I Was Here!

Baghdad Burning

Here's a blog by an Iraqi -- Baghdad Burning. This post is very sobering. I try my hardest to not be a knee-jerk liberal and I sure don't want to turn this into a Democrats vs. Republicans issue and after reading this blog (and all accounts really) how could anyone possibly do that? President Bush and his administration got us into this and both Democrats and Republicans okayed the invasion of Iraq and the press didn't question the proof of WMD's and so on and on. Blame falls on many. But what does that matter now? What do we do now? Does the President's plan have ANY chance of working? I'm not going to demonize it just because I want a democrat in the White House, but can anything work now? Doesn't this seem hopeless? I mean truly HOPELESS!

Sorry for the downer, but this blog really made the situation more present. Here is her end of the year post --

End of Another Year...
You know your country is in trouble when:
The UN has to open a special branch just to keep track of the chaos and bloodshed, UNAMI.
Abovementioned branch cannot be run from your country.
The politicians who worked to put your country in this sorry state can no longer be found inside of, or anywhere near, its borders.
The only thing the US and Iran can agree about is the deteriorating state of your nation.
An 8-year war and 13-year blockade are looking like the country's 'Golden Years'.
Your country is purportedly 'selling' 2 million barrels of oil a day, but you are standing in line for 4 hours for black market gasoline for the generator.
For every 5 hours of no electricity, you get one hour of public electricity and then the government announces it's going to cut back on providing that hour.
Politicians who supported the war spend tv time debating whether it is 'sectarian bloodshed' or 'civil war'.
People consider themselves lucky if they can actually identify the corpse of the relative that's been missing for two weeks.

A day in the life of the average Iraqi has been reduced to identifying corpses, avoiding car bombs and attempting to keep track of which family members have been detained, which ones have been exiled and which ones have been abducted.

2006 has been, decidedly, the worst year yet. No- really. The magnitude of this war and occupation is only now hitting the country full force. It's like having a big piece of hard, dry earth you are determined to break apart. You drive in the first stake in the form of an infrastructure damaged with missiles and the newest in arms technology, the first cracks begin to form. Several smaller stakes come in the form of politicians like Chalabi, Al Hakim, Talbani, Pachachi, Allawi and Maliki. The cracks slowly begin to multiply and stretch across the once solid piece of earth, reaching out towards its edges like so many skeletal hands. And you apply pressure. You surround it from all sides and push and pull. Slowly, but surely, it begins coming apart- a chip here, a chunk there.

That is Iraq right now. The Americans have done a fine job of working to break it apart. This last year has nearly everyone convinced that that was the plan right from the start. There were too many blunders for them to actually have been, simply, blunders. The 'mistakes' were too catastrophic. The people the Bush administration chose to support and promote were openly and publicly terrible- from the conman and embezzler Chalabi, to the terrorist Jaffari, to the militia man Maliki. The decisions, like disbanding the Iraqi army, abolishing the original constitution, and allowing militias to take over Iraqi security were too damaging to be anything but intentional.

The question now is, but why? I really have been asking myself that these last few days. What does America possibly gain by damaging Iraq to this extent? I'm certain only raving idiots still believe this war and occupation were about WMD or an actual fear of Saddam.

Al Qaeda? That's laughable. Bush has effectively created more terrorists in Iraq these last 4 years than Osama could have created in 10 different terrorist camps in the distant hills of Afghanistan. Our children now play games of 'sniper' and 'jihadi', pretending that one hit an American soldier between the eyes and this one overturned a Humvee.

This last year especially has been a turning point. Nearly every Iraqi has lost so much. So much. There's no way to describe the loss we've experienced with this war and occupation. There are no words to relay the feelings that come with the knowledge that daily almost 40 corpses are found in different states of decay and mutilation. There is no compensation for the dense, black cloud of fear that hangs over the head of every Iraqi. Fear of things so out of ones hands, it borders on the ridiculous- like whether your name is 'too Sunni' or 'too Shia'. Fear of the larger things- like the Americans in the tank, the police patrolling your area in black bandanas and green banners, and the Iraqi soldiers wearing black masks at the checkpoint.

Again, I can't help but ask myself why this was all done? What was the point of breaking Iraq so that it was beyond repair? Iran seems to be the only gainer. Their presence in Iraq is so well-established, publicly criticizing a cleric or ayatollah verges on suicide. Has the situation gone so beyond America that it is now irretrievable? Or was this a part of the plan all along? My head aches just posing the questions.

What has me most puzzled right now is: why add fuel to the fire? Sunnis and moderate Shia are being chased out of the larger cities in the south and the capital. Baghdad is being torn apart with Shia leaving Sunni areas and Sunnis leaving Shia areas- some under threat and some in fear of attacks. People are being openly shot at check points or in drive by killings… Many colleges have stopped classes. Thousands of Iraqis no longer send their children to school- it's just not safe.

Why make things worse by insisting on Saddam's execution now? Who gains if they hang Saddam? Iran, naturally, but who else? There is a real fear that this execution will be the final blow that will shatter Iraq. Some Sunni and Shia tribes have threatened to arm their members against the Americans if Saddam is executed. Iraqis in general are watching closely to see what happens next, and quietly preparing for the worst.

This is because now, Saddam no longer represents himself or his regime. Through the constant insistence of American war propaganda, Saddam is now representative of all Sunni Arabs (never mind most of his government were Shia). The Americans, through their speeches and news articles and Iraqi Puppets, have made it very clear that they consider him to personify Sunni Arab resistance to the occupation. Basically, with this execution, what the Americans are saying is "Look- Sunni Arabs- this is your man, we all know this. We're hanging him- he symbolizes you." And make no mistake about it, this trial and verdict and execution are 100% American. Some of the actors were Iraqi enough, but the production, direction and montage was pure Hollywood (though low-budget, if you ask me).

That is, of course, why Talbani doesn't want to sign his death penalty- not because the mob man suddenly grew a conscience, but because he doesn't want to be the one who does the hanging- he won't be able to travel far away enough if he does that.

Maliki's government couldn't contain their glee. They announced the ratification of the execution order before the actual court did. A few nights ago, some American news program interviewed Maliki's bureau chief, Basim Al-Hassani who was speaking in accented American English about the upcoming execution like it was a carnival he'd be attending. He sat, looking sleazy and not a little bit ridiculous, his dialogue interspersed with 'gonna', 'gotta' and 'wanna'... Which happens, I suppose, when the only people you mix with are American soldiers.

My only conclusion is that the Americans want to withdraw from Iraq, but would like to leave behind a full-fledged civil war because it wouldn't look good if they withdraw and things actually begin to improve, would it?

Here we come to the end of 2006 and I am sad. Not simply sad for the state of the country, but for the state of our humanity, as Iraqis. We've all lost some of the compassion and civility that I felt made us special four years ago. I take myself as an example. Nearly four years ago, I cringed every time I heard about the death of an American soldier. They were occupiers, but they were humans also and the knowledge that they were being killed in my country gave me sleepless nights. Never mind they crossed oceans to attack the country, I actually felt for them.

Had I not chronicled those feelings of agitation in this very blog, I wouldn't believe them now. Today, they simply represent numbers. 3000 Americans dead over nearly four years? Really? That's the number of dead Iraqis in less than a month. The Americans had families? Too bad. So do we. So do the corpses in the streets and the ones waiting for identification in the morgue.

Is the American soldier that died today in Anbar more important than a cousin I have who was shot last month on the night of his engagement to a woman he's wanted to marry for the last six years? I don't think so.

Just because Americans die in smaller numbers, it doesn't make them more significant, does it?

The Human Journey

There's a new Genographic Project through The National Geographic Society that will help us "understand the human journey—where we came from and how we got to where we live today. This unprecedented effort will map humanity's genetic journey through the ages." To participate you have to shell out a hundred bucks, but you also get information on your own ancestors' journey. I hope to do it.

Warriors of the Clouds

from National Geographic.com

It's the return of the mummies for one Peruvian museum. On January 11 the Museum of the Nation in Lima opened to the public a collection of Incan and Chachapoya Indian remains (such as the one seen here at a preview) from between A.D. 900 and 1500.

The Chachapoyas, or "warriors of the clouds," lived in the cloud forests of the Amazonas region of modern-day Peru. Just before the arrival of the Spanish to the New World, the Inca conquered the Chachapoyas, though incorporating them into the empire was difficult because of fierce resistance.

—Photograph by Mariana Bazo/REUTERS

uh.

One of the many reasons I don't watch American Idol.

Lunztspeak

Here is Frank Luntz on Fresh Air. My stomach turned while listening to this BS artist. He says he wants clarity in language. So when he says "Death Tax" instead of "Estate Tax" he is only clarifying language? Or exploration instead of drilling, or climate change instead of global warming. He uses Orwell's Politics and the English Language as precedent for his distortion of language! How can a person fight absurdity?! This man is writing the language that the Republican party uses. This is happening every second a talking head is on one of the many cable "news" networks. How can it be stopped? It works!

His company mantra -- "It's not what you say, it's what they hear."

Luntz on Frontline

A funny look at Lunztspeak but it is outdated.

Great doubt: great awakening.
Little doubt: little awakening.
No doubt: no awakening.
— Zen koan

Pan's Labyrinth

We saw Pan's Labyrinth and there wasn't enough Pan OR Labryinth. All in all it was good, but not great. I kept waiting for it to get to the "good" stuff.


This dude was imaginative and creepy, but didn't really do much to add to the story. The fantasy vs. reality was disconnected so much that it seemed the fantasy was just there for a little eye candy. I think the writer didn't know that fantasy can be just as meaningful (or more so) as reality.

I wan't to see this

barn owl

I love old barns, but this one is special because there is a Snowy Owl on top of it! This is a picture taken by a birder named Jane Ward in Livingston County Illinois. This has been an invasion year for snowies. There have been 4-5 seen in Kansas and 2-3 seen in IL. This usually happens in years where the vole population in Canada is very low and the owls must move south to find food. A different Snowy Owl in IL was hit by a car a week ago (it was taken to a rehabilitator, but I haven't heard if it survived). These birds are usually emaciated and vulnerable to predation and car strikes, so seeing one is cool, but also a little sad.

Poem of the day

Barbed Wire


One summer afternoon when nothing much
was happening, they were standing around
a tractor beside the barn while a horse
in the field poked his head between two strands
of the barbed-wire fence to get at the grass
along the lane, when it happened-something

they passed around the wood stove late at night
for years, but never could explain-someone
may have dropped a wrench into the toolbox
or made a sudden move, or merely thought
what might happen if the horse got scared, and
then he did get scared, jumped sideways and ran

down the fence line, leaving chunks of his throat
skin and hair on every barb for ten feet
before he pulled free and ran a short way
into the field, stopped and planted his hoofs
wide apart like a sawhorse, hung his head
down as if to watch his blood running out,

almost as if he were about to speak
to them, who almost thought he could regret
that he no longer had the strength to stand,
then shuddered to his knees, fell on his side,
and gave up breathing while the dripping wire
hummed like a bowstring in the splintered air.

by Henry Taylor

Get Lost!

I found an interesting zine from Moab, UT called
The Canyon Country Zephyr. Check it out.

Pancho, Lefty, Willie, Bob and Townes

Two of my favorites playing one of my favorite songs! And yes, youtube has taken over my blog.

javascript:void(0)

Colbert, Colbert

Hurt

Jimi

I watched The Raconteurs and Cat Power on Austin City limits tonight. Jack White and band were playing a song that reminded me of The Band of Gypsies playing Machine Gun at the Fillmore East on New Years Eve 1969. Not sure the name of their song, but it was darn good. Felt like it was one of those songs best heard live. Jack White is uber-cool and I really started liking him when he did some songs for the Cold Mountain soundtrack.

I found this version of Jimi playing at The Isle of Wight. The Filmore East versions, with Buddy Miles on drums instead of The Experience's Mitch Mitchell, are by far the best (they played more than one show). When I put this song on I am completely transported. I know it sounds cliche, but no other music does this to me. Get the "Live At The Fillmore East" 2CD set and put your headphones on and enjoy.

I hesitate to put this out there as THE song because the Fillmore version is much more powerful, but I still like this.

230,000

A fishing ship remains stuck on top of houses in Banda Aceh, Indonesia, two years after a devastating tsunami struck coastal towns along the Indian Ocean.

Thousands of people across the region lit candles, visited graves, and observed moments of silence on Tuesday to commemorate the tragedy. About 230,000 people died and millions more were left homeless when waves traveling as fast as a jet airliner slammed into villages in 11 countries on December 26, 2004.

Moths drink the tears of sleeping birds

Moths drink the tears of sleeping birds
NewScientist.com news service
Debora MacKenzie

A species of moth drinks tears from the eyes of sleeping birds using a fearsome proboscis shaped like a harpoon, scientists have revealed. The new discovery – spied in Madagascar – is the first time moths have been seen feeding on the tears of birds.

Roland Hilgartner at the German Primate Centre in Göttingen, Germany, and Mamisolo Raoilison Hilgartner at the University of Antananarivo in Madagascar, witnessed the apparently unique sight in the island state’s Kirindy forest.

Tear-feeding moths and butterflies are known to exist elsewhere in Africa, Asia and South America, but they mainly feed on large, placid animals, such as deer, antelope or crocodiles, which cannot readily brush them away. But there are no such large animals on Madagascar. The main mammals – lemurs and mongoose – have paws capable of shooing the moths. Birds can fly away.

But not when they are sleeping. The Madagascan moths were observed on the necks of sleeping magpie robins and Newtonia birds, with the tip of their proboscises inserted under the bird’s eyelid, drinking avidly (scroll down for images). This was during the wet season, so the scientists think the insects wanted salt, as the local soils are low in sodium.

But sleeping birds have two eyelids, both closed. So instead of the soft, straw-like mouthparts found on tear-drinking moths elsewhere, the Madagascan moth has a proboscis with hooks and barbs “shaped like an ancient harpoon”, Hilgartner says.

This can be inserted under the bird’s eyelids, where the barbs anchor it, apparently without disturbing the bird. The team does not yet know whether the insect spits out an anaesthetic to dull the irritation. They also want to investigate whether, like their counterparts elsewhere, the Madagascan tear-drinkers are all males who get most of their nutrition from the tears.

Journal reference: Biology Letters (DOI: 10.1098/rsbl.2006.0581)

Junk Mail

Get Rid of Junk Mail

The Persuaders

Check out The Persuaders. I think I'll use it in my class this semester.

Quote of the afternoon

". . . once language exists only to convey information, it is dying."

--Richard Hugo

World's Tallest Man Saves Dolphins, News at 11

December 14, 2006—Who says superheroes don't exist?

Desperate to save two dolphins that had eaten plastic pieces at an aquarium in China's Liaoning Province, veterinarians summoned the world's tallest man—7-foot-9-inch (2.36-meter) shepherd Bao Xishun of the neighboring Inner Mongolia region.

The plastic pieces had caused the marine mammals to lose their appetites and become depressed, Royal Jidi Ocean World officials told the BBC. But the dolphins' contracting stomachs had stymied vets' attempts to use instruments to remove the objects. Instead Bao's extra-long arms were able to extract the offending shards yesterday.

After Bao, 54, "operated" on them—their teeth wrapped with towels for safety, as seen in the bottom photo—the dolphins were in "very good condition," aquarium manager Chen Lujun told the BBC.

Veterinarian Zhu Xiaoling told the state-controlled Xinhua news agency, "Some very small plastic pieces are still left in the dolphins' stomachs.

"However, the dolphins will be able to digest these and are expected to recover soon."

—Ted Chamberlain

Merry Christmas

So I'm sitting here at Panera with my Mac and books and coffee and feeling sorry for myself because I am poor and wondering how to make some money, blah, blah, blah and outside I see a man asking for change (which is such an odd word) and this kid, who looks like any of my students stops, pulls out his wallet and hands him a twenty. And I'm not looking at this guy thinking he can afford to just hand out twenties. Very unassuming young man. And besides feeling like a tool for worrying about money I am happy and slightly less disparaged about humanity in general.

Snow!

Happy Friggin' Thanksgiving

There is something so unbelievable heinous about my cousin Chris that Thanksgiving cannot be held at my aunt Kay's. Something so profoundly sinister that a holiday that once brought our family together is now splitting us apart. And what is this horriblle character flaw of my cousin? He's gay. My mother told me they won't let him and his boyfriend set foot in their home. I guess they want to retain their gay-free status for the all bigoted olympics in '08. I can't sleep I am so angry. How can a normal, thinking, supposedly caring human being be so hateful? My family wasn't liberal and I grew up in Kansas and wasn't really raised to think one way or another about homosexuals, but somehow just by living in the world and caring for people I learned that hey, I shouldn't be a close-minded hate monger. Crazy I guess. I guess I've become too insulated by the community I have been in since I got out of high school. But when family turns on you it is another thing all together (as many gay men and women know all too well). I shouldn't be surprised, but I am, but really more sad than anything. I suppose my aunt and her family would quote scripture to back up their reasoning. I don't know. It feels so ludicrous. I've always believed you have to try to see from the other sides' point of view so you can at least try to understand where they are coming from, but in this instance I have no wish to see from anywhere near their side. OK, they were raised to think this way, different culture, whatever, but this is family, this is someone you love, or loved before they came out. What goes through their mnds when they think of a homosexual? deviant? pedophile? Now forget how stupid those thoughts are, do they really think Chris could ever be associated with those words? This should be eye opening to them. Yes! Gay people are just like you and me! But no, they push them away and into some preconceived notion instead of actually THINKING! Shouldn't they change? I mean really. There is no logical reason a person should hate a person based on the fact they are gay. What is wrong with people?

Maggie Faircloth Photography

Check out my wife's new

website!!!

Quote of the Day

"Everything had changed suddenly--the tone , the moral climate; you didn't know what to think, whom to listen to. As if all your life you had been led by the hand to learn to walk by yourself. There was no one around, neither family nor people whose judgment you respected. At such a time you felt the need of committing yourself to something absolute--life or truth or beauty--of being ruled by it in place of the man-made rules that had been discarded. You needed to surrender to some such ultimate purpose more fully, more unreservedly than you had ever done in the old familiar, peaceful days, in the old life that was now abolished and gone for good." -- Boris Pasternak, Doctor Zhivago

Quote of the Day!

"Tomorrow you’re all going to wake up in a Brave New World, a world where the constitution gets trampled by an army of terrorist clones created in a stem cell research lab run by homosexual doctors who sterilize their instruments over burning American flags. Where Tax and Spend Democrats take all your hard-earned money and use it to buy electric cars for National Public Radio and teach evolution to illegal immigrants. Oh, and everybody’s high! Whoo! I’ve had it! You people don’t deserve a Republican majority. Screw this, I quit! "
-- Stephen Colbert

Gerry Studds

I've been checking out Ron Silliman's blog. He has an interesting post on Congressman Gerry Studds. Here's a section I found interesting. Check it out.

"So how does change come, finally, in the world? In part, it’s just in the ordinariness of a noun phrase, as at the end of this opening sentence from Damien Cave’s piece in the Times:

'Gerry E. Studds, the first openly gay member of Congress and a demanding advocate for New England fishermen and for gay rights, died early Saturday at Boston University Medical Center, his husband said.'"

Is God Green?

Bill Moyers' show "Moyers On America" did a good piece on evangelicals and the environmental movement. Check it out.

Is God Green?

Brown Caterpillar

I thought this photo was cool. It was done by a birder here in Chicago. Here's his site.

Evan Graff's Nature Photography

New Bird Species

This Yariguíes brush finch has been confirmed as a new species found in the Andes. It is the first new species confirmed without taking a specimen (shooting one). I've never been a big fan of taking specimens, but realized that it was an important tool for scientists. Now with DNA testing it is becoming less important.

Check out that part (below) about the indigenous tribe of Yariguies committing mass suicide instead of submitting to Spanish rule! Wow. There's my next Google search.



New Bird Discovered in Colombia -- National Geographic.com

October 10, 2006—This is one rebel that's been tied to a very serious cause.

The fist-size bird with punk-rock plumage is a new—and possibly threatened—avian species that makes its home in the last remnants of a remote Colombian cloud forest.

Dubbed the Yariguíes brush finch, the small bird was first found in 2004 in an isolated region of the eastern Andes mountain range known as the Serranía de los Yariguíes. The region and the finch are both named for the Yariguíes, an indigenous tribe that once inhabited the mountain forests and reportedly committed mass suicide rather than submit to Spanish colonial rule in the 1500s.

Over the past three years researchers Thomas Donegan and Blanca Huertas have regularly hiked into the remote Andes forests to help document avian species diversity. In a paper submitted in February to the Bulletin of the British Ornithologists' Club, Donegan and Huertas describe finding a bird that differs from other known brush finches because it has a solid black back and no white markings on its wings.

During further fieldwork in 2005 the scientists were able to capture one of the birds and take photographs and a blood sample before releasing it back to the wild. The images and DNA analysis cemented the finch's status as a new species.

"There are about two to three new birds found in the world every year," Donegan told the Associated Press. "It's a very rare event."

And the discovery of what researchers believe to be a rare bird got a conservation boost in the nick of time. Only a few months before the new brush finch was confirmed, the Colombian government had designated much of the bird's habitat as the Serranía de los Yariguíes National Park, a 193,698-acre (78,387-hectare) expanse of protected grasslands and mountain forests.

"The new protected area," Donegan and Huertas wrote in their Bulletin paper, "should assist in conserving [the Yariguíes brush finch] and other threatened species."

Please do not mix

Here's our latest Nuclear proliferater.



For your mental health do not mix these two things.

Darfur

I at least try to stay up to date with the world news, but for some reason I haven't paid nearly enough attention to the conflict and subsequent genocide in Darfur. Maybe I just didn't want to hear more bad news, but not knowing was making me feel worse. The death toll is estimated at 200,000 people right now, this includes murder, starvation, and illness all caused by the conflict. The BBC news has good coverage of the situation. Here is an overview of how the problem started and where it stands. And here is their main page on Darfur.

Amnesty International's page has many personal stories of the conflict.

And here are a few maps to get you placed.

"The Road" by Cormac McCarthy

Just got my copy of "The Road" by McCarthy and read it in one sitting, finishing at 3 this morning. All I can say is WOW!!! Probably one of the most intense experiences I've ever had with a novel. I just read the New York Times review by Janet Maslin and thought it was right on the money. Maslin writes, "'The Road' would be pure misery if not for its stunning, savage beauty." This is true, but the beauty doesn't reside only in the language and description, but in the relationship between the father and son (the two main characters).

If you've read Blood Meridian or Suttree you'll know that McCarthy's language is usually thick. I remember the first time I read Suttree I was looking up words often. This novel is stripped down to meet the needs of the situation. And what is the situation? Well, the U.S., and seemingly the world, has been pretty much destroyed by nuclear war. In our post cold war, pre 9/11 haze this might have seemed a quaint idea for a novel, not that it would have been, but the days of "The Day After" and nuclear drills in school seemed like the distant pass. Of course we knew after the genie was let out of the bottle there was never any chance we could put it back. "The Road" has lost all notions of genies or books or TV. The world is hunger, shelter, survival. Would a person want to live in this world? Without the human connection between the boy and his father the answer is no. Even with the connection the question is up for debate.

There is hope in this novel, but you better not blink because you might miss it! I copied the NY Times review below. If you think you might read the book I wouldn't read the review. It is much better to accumulate the knowledge, given you in the review, as you read. I also put the very last paragraph of the novel at the bottom because I wanted to have it. It is unbelievably gorgeous. It doesn't really give any plot away, but it is an ending that is earned, both by the reader and the author. So I have warned you!

The Road Through Hell, Paved With Desperation

By JANET MASLIN

In “The Road” a boy and his father lurch across the cold, wretched, wet, corpse-strewn, ashen landscape of a post-apocalyptic world. The imagery is brutal even by Cormac McCarthy’s high standards for despair. This parable is also trenchant and terrifying, written with stripped-down urgency and fueled by the force of a universal nightmare. “The Road” would be pure misery if not for its stunning, savage beauty.

This is an exquisitely bleak incantation — pure poetic brimstone. Mr. McCarthy has summoned his fiercest visions to invoke the devastation. He gives voice to the unspeakable in a terse cautionary tale that is too potent to be numbing, despite the stupefying ravages it describes. Mr. McCarthy brings an almost biblical fury as he bears witness to sights man was never meant to see.

“There is no prophet in the earth’s long chronicle who is not honored here today,” the father says, trying to make his son understand why they inhabit a gray moonscape. “Whatever form you spoke of you were right.” Thus “The Road” keeps pace with the most enterprising doomsayers as death and desperation manifest themselves on every page. And in a perverse miracle it yields one last calamity when it seems that things cannot possibly get worse.

Yet as the boy and man wander, encountering remnants of the lost world and providing the reader with more and more clues about what destroyed it, this narrative is also illuminated by extraordinary tenderness. “He knew only that the child was his warrant,” it says of the father and his mission. “He said: if he is not the word of God God never spoke.”

The father’s loving efforts to shepherd his son are made that much more wrenching by the unavailability of food, shelter, safety, companionship or hope in most places where they scavenge to subsist.

Keeping memory alive is difficult, since the past grows increasingly remote. It is as if these lonely characters are experiencing “the onset of some cold glaucoma dimming away the world.” The past has become like a place inhabited by the newly blind, all of it slowly slipping away. As for looking toward the future, “there is no later,” the book says starkly. “This is later.”

The ruined setting of “The Road” is strewn with terrible, revealing artifacts. There are old newspapers. (“The curious news. The quaint concerns.”) There is one lone bottle of Coca-Cola, still absurdly fizzy when all else is dust. There are charred corpses frozen in their final postures, like the long-dead man who sits on a porch like “a straw man set out to announce some holiday.” Sometimes these prompt the father to recall “a dull rose glow in the windowglass” at 1:17 in the morning, the moment when the clocks stopped forever.

“The Road” is not concerned with explaining what caused this cataclysm. It is more abstract than that. Instead it becomes a relentless cautionary tale with “Lord of the Flies”-style symbolic impact, marked by a dark fascination with the primal laws of survival. Much of its impact comes from the absolute lawlessness of its backdrop as it undermines the father’s only remaining certitude: that he must keep his boy alive no matter what danger befalls them.

As they move down the metaphorical road of the title, father and son encounter all manner of perils. The weather is bitter, the landscape colorless, the threat of starvation imminent. There is also the occasional interloper or ominous relic, since the road is not entirely abandoned.

The sight of a scorched, shuffling man prompts the boy to ask what is wrong with him; the father simply replies that the man has been struck by lightning. Spear-carrying marchers on the road offer other hints about recent history. Groups of people are stowed away in hidden places as if they were other people’s food supply. In a book filled with virtual zombies and fixated on the living dead, it turns out that they are.

Since the cataclysm has presumably incinerated all dictionaries, Mr. McCarthy’s affinity for words like rachitic and crozzled has as much visceral, atmospheric power as precise meaning. His use of language is as exultant as his imaginings are hellish, a hint that “The Road” will ultimately be more radiant than it is punishing. Somehow Mr. McCarthy is able to hold firm to his pessimism while allowing the reader to see beyond it. This is art that both frightens and inspires.

Although “The Road” is entirely unsentimental, it gives father and son a memory to keep them moving, even if it is the memory of how and why the boy’s mother chose to die. She was pregnant when the world exploded, and the boy was born a few days after she and the man “watched distant cities burn.”

Ultimately she gave up and took a bullet: “She was gone and the coldness of it was her final gift.” In a book whose events are isolated and carefully chosen, the appearance of a flare gun late in the story is filled with echoes of her final decision.

The mother’s suicide is one more reason for astonishment at Mr. McCarthy’s final gesture here: an embrace of faith in the face of no hope whatsoever. Coming as it does after such intense moments of despondency, this faith is even more of a leap than it might be in a more forgiving story. It adds immeasurably to the staying power of a book that is simple yet mysterious, simultaneously cryptic and crystal clear.

“The Road” offers nothing in the way of escape or comfort. But its fearless wisdom is more indelible than reassurance could ever be.

Village Voice Review

"Once there were brook trout in the streams in the mountains.You could see them standing in the amber current where the white edges of their fins wimpled softly in the flow.They smelled of moss in your hand. Polished and muscular and torsional. On their backs were vermiculate patterns that were maps of the world in its becoming. Maps and mazes. Of a thing which could not be put back. Not be made right again. In the deep glens where they lived all things were older than man and they hummed of mystery."

Notes From A Bottle Found On The Beach At Carmel

Here are a few excerpts from Evan S. Connell's book "Notes From A Bottle Found On The Beach At Carmel."


They are called silos, because they resemble
those towers in which fodder, grain, and other foods
are stored. But there is only the windy sky
around them, broken rocks, sand, weeds,
and a few burned and blasted roots. Animals,
even the smallest, will not come near this place.
It is as though they have sensed the purpose of
these objects, and comprehend them far better than we.

*

Laplace was of the opinion that a comet struck the earth
during some remote era, reducing the human population
to a few individuals who lived in a primitive state
for countless centuries, occupied by the problems of
survival, until they had lost all memory of the arts;
and not until these wants were felt did they begin again,
as if Man were but newly born.

*

I could distinguish boats in the harbor below. It was
late afternoon when I flew over. I could visualize
those men preparing to quit work. I could imagine myself
in their position—I, too, have a wife. It was not that
I eagerly did what you know I have done; it was,
to put the matter in the simplest terms, a function.
Do you understand? I was merely handed my orders.
In fact, I never had seen the young man who approached,
saluted, and gave me the envelope I was expecting.
What should I have done but accept? Should I have
woodenly remained where I was, protesting to superiors . . .


*

Someone has said that on the 15th day of August
a boy in a Japanese city deliberately burned to ashes
the one thing that had not been taken from him,
which was a schoolbook he found while sifting the ruins
of his father’s home. In this book were several poems,
and exercises in the art of reading. No one thus far
has explained his act. But is it not clear to everyone?
The boy had perceived the absurdity of such things.

*

Things that remained are not diminished by time
are whichever live in men's hearts or have fallen
or have been thrown into the sea.

*

Descartes was preparing to issue his pamphlet on the
Nature of the universe when he was informed of the fate
of Galileo, which is the reason he locked up his thesis
in a desk. It was not published until fourteen years after his death.

I am like a deaf mute with a message
of the utmost importance
addressing someone ignorant of my fantastic language,
who must resort to a frightful pantomime
of sighs and gestures.
Laboriously, I am transcribing reality.

The Eskimo have twenty words
to express the conditions of snow.
The Tokelau Islander
has nine words for the ripeness of coconut.
I have not one word
to express my longing.

*

A toucan is reported, more than a century old,
which lives in the jungle and had belonged to Indians
and learnt their language. Now this tribe is extinct,
so that of all things on earth there is only this bird
which can speak the words these people spoke, and has
no idea of their meaning.


*

Nothing existed before me; nothing will exist after me.

Because it is possible to have intuitive knowledge
of things which do not exist
our vision is absolute, distant in place and subject
from our object; and therefore visions remain,
as we witness a multitude of stars that have gone.

*

The depression I felt since yesterday has gone. I
will sit up tonight, until dawn, to meditate.
I feel strangely sensate, and wakeful.
My life is not half so worthless as I had imagined.
I shall not decay, I shall not give myself over to the worms.
I shall not witness corruption within my heart.
I shall have my being, I shall live and germinate;
and I shall wake up in peace. The shape of my vision
endures, after the form of my countenance is taken.

*

To think deeply right now would terrify me.

*

Each life is a myth, a song given out
of darkness, a tale for children, the legend we create.
Are we not heroes, each of us
in one fashion or another,
wandering through mysterious labyrinths?

*

No count was possible at Hiroshima; consider the centuries
and keep silent.

*

I remember a woman of San Ildefonso,
reputed to be more than a century old, who offered me
a bowl polished with obsidian stones. I accepted
this bowl in both hands, and observed it was uneven,
as are all things. When I had placed it down
so that it rested between us, it appeared symmetrical
and was filled with beauty.

*

Of what use are words, however fateful and oracular,
if they fail to move and horrify the listener.


*


Just now I have heard someone say that many neglect
to discover what gives them pleasure.

It is said that certain savages of the New World,
when they had been persuaded to give up their convictions,
plucked wild roses which they bound to the Crucifix
as a means of indicating their adoration.
But when the Spaniards discovered what they have done
their villages were burnt and the inhabitants massacred.
In a similar fashion, we have proceeded on our way.

*

Thirteen years since the war.
Already it as though it never occurred.

*

I mention at this point the log of the Yankee whaler
Monongahela, together with the testimony of
Her captain, Jason Seabury, and of the men who sighted
And chased and struck with two harpoons
a plesiosaur that had survived from the Jurassic era.
These sailors measured he carcass,
Finding it to be one hundred and three feet in length,
And seven inches; after which they stripped off
its meat and saved its oil, bring this to port
to sell, because they were practical men.
Numerous sermons could abide in this.

Ivory-billed Woodpecker

Here's My Post from last winter about going to the Florida panhandle. I couldn't say then why I was going down there, but now that the news is out I thought I'd post something about it. My friend Tyler Hicks was working down at Auburn University doing breeding bird work when him and a couple others from their lab decided to look for some suitable Ivory-billed habitat. Looking at maps they found a nice spot along the Choctawhatchee River a few miles south of Ponce De Leon, FL. Mainly they wanted to see some big timber and just take a look around, but instead Tyler got an eyefull of an Ivory-billed flying overhead. Tyler called me and left a message that he had some good news. For some reason I knew. We had always talked about the woodpecker and knowing he was in the southeast I just had a feeling. When he told me he had seen one I had no doubts. I've been birding with Tyler for a long time and he has amazing skills. So during winter break I headed down to take a look for myself. Just before I arrived the search team had quite a few detections and even a video that had captured the IBWO's double-knock. It was quite a thrill to kayak through some very old cypress forest and spend time searching. I was content with that, but one morning I heard two double-knocks and nearly lost it! There was nothing else it could have been. I tried getting closer, but never got a glimpse of the double-knocker.

Here are the last known Ivory-bills found in the Singer Tract in Louisiana in the 30's.


There is still no undisputable evidence. The paper they wrote is called "Evidence Suggesting that Ivory-billed Woodpeckers (Campephilus principalis) Exist in Florida." They are being careful not to assert any kind of certainty. They learned from the Cornell paper that has been criticized.

The only other woodpecker that could make a similarly loud knock are the Pileated Woodpeckers, but they do not do the "double-knock" like Ivory-bills, so until it is proven that Pileateds are capable of doing that knock I will be convinced I heard an Ivory-billed. And I still have no doubts of what Tyler saw.

A pic of a cavity from the site.



Here is Geoff Hill's Auburn site about the search.

I'm in here somewhere.

Here is the University of Windsor's IBWO site. They did all of the sound data.

Happy Birthday Bilbo and Frodo!!!!!

Today is Bilbo and Frodo's birthday! Join me in a pint of Butterbur's best beer and a toke on a pipe of Old Toby and wish them the best!!


“In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole and that means comfort.”

Bilbo's Birthday Song

Solar Energy

This week's Living On Earth had a good segment about solar power. I thought this little tidbit was interesting.

"Israel has actually a requirement on all new home construction to include a solar thermal system. Spain has the same requirement and Germany in fact has a strong demand for solar thermal systems. So just to give you some perspective, in the United States we are installing about 6,000 systems a year. In Germany they're installing 80-thousand systems per year, and in China they're installing 250-thousand solar water heating systems per year. So we are way behind the curve."

America is behind the curve? Whaaa? And with our government so worried about domestic energy.

And look at how much fun solar energy can be!

Solar Energy

Gluttony

Maybe this python's eyes were bigger than his stomach.

Pilgrim At Tinker Creek

One of my favorite sections of Annie Dillard's Pilgrim At Tinker Creek

CATCH IT IF YOU CAN.

It is early March. I am dazed from a long day of interstate driving homeward; I pull in at a gas station in Nowhere, Virginia, north of Lexington. The young boy in charge ("Chick' at oll?") is offering a free cup of coffee with every gas purchase. We talk in the glass-walled office while my coffee cools enough to drink. He tells me, among other things, that the rival gas station down the road, whose FREE COFFEE sign is visible from the interstate, charges you fifteen cents if you want your coffee in a Styrofoam cup, as opposed, I guess, to your bare hands.

All the time we talk, the boy's new beagle puppy is skidding around the office, sniffing impartially at my shoes and at the wire rack of folded maps. The cheerful human conversation wakes me, recalls me, not to a normal consciousness, but to a kind of energetic readiness. I step outside, followed by the puppy.

I am absolutely alone. There are no other customers. The road is vacant, the interstate is out of sight and earshot. I have hazarded into a new corner of the world, an unknown spot, a Brigadoon. Before me extends a low hill trembling in yellow brome, and behind the hill, filling the sky, rises an enormous mountain ridge, forested, alive and awesome with brilliant blown lights. I have never seen anything so tremulous and live. Overhead, great strips and chunks of cloud dash to the northwest in a gold rush. At my back the sun is setting --how can I not have noticed before that the sun is setting? My mind has been a blank slab of black asphalt for hours, but that doesn't stop the sun's wild wheel. I set my coffee beside me on the curb; I smell loam on the wind; I pat the puppy; I watch the mountain. My hand works automatically over the puppy's fur, following the line of hair under his ears, down his neck, inside his forelegs, along his hot-skinned belly.

Shadows lope along the mountain's rumpled flanks; they elongate like root tips, like lobes of spilling water, faster and faster. A warm purple pigment pools in each ruck and tuck of the rock; it deepens and spreads, boring crevasses, canyons. As the purple vaults and slides, it ticks out the unleafed forest and rumpled rock in gilt, in shape-shifting patches of glow. These gold lights veer and retrack, shatter and glide in a series of dazzling splashes, shrinking, leaking, exploding. The ridge's bosses and hummocks sprout bulging from its side; the whole mountain looms miles closer; the light warms and reddens; the bare forest folds and pleats itself like living protoplasm before my eyes, like a running chart, a wildly scrawling oscillograph on the present moment. The air cools; the puppy's skin is hot. I am more alive than all the world.

Shadows lope along the mountain's rumpled flanks; they elongate like root tips, like lobes of spilling water, faster and faster. A warm purple pigment pools in each ruck and tuck of the rock; it deepens and spreads, boring crevasses, canyons. As the purple vaults and slides, it ticks out the unleafed forest and rumpled rock in gilt, in shape-shifting patches of glow. These gold lights veer and retrack, shatter and glide in a series of dazzling splashes, shrinking, leaking, exploding. The ridge's bosses and hummocks sprout bulging from its side; the whole mountain looms miles closer; the light warms and reddens; the bare forest folds and pleats itself like living protoplasm before my eyes, like a running chart, a wildly scrawling oscillograph on the present moment. The air cools; the puppy's skin is hot. I am more alive than all the world.

This is it, I think, this is it, right now, the present... I am patting the puppy, I am watching the mountain. And the second I verbalize this awareness in my brain I cease to see the mountain or feel the puppy. I am opaque, so much black asphalt. But at the same second, the second I know I've lost it, I also realize that the puppy is still squirming on his back under my hand. Nothing has chanaged for him. He draws his legs down to stretch the skin taut so he feels every fingertip's stroke along his furred and arching side, his flank, his flung-back throat.

I sip my coffee. I look at the mountain, which is still doing its tricks, as you look at a still-beautiful face belonging to a person who was once your lover in another country years ago: with fond nostalgia, and recognition, but no real feeling save a secret astonishment that you are now strangers. Thanks. For the memories. It is ironic that the one thing that all religions recognize as separating us from our creator -- our very self-consciousness -- is also the one thing that divides us from our fellow creatures. It was a bitter birthday present from evolution, cutting us off at both ends. I get in the car and drive home.