Some Garden Pics

The community garden has been a success this year. We've been inundated with tomatoes and squash to the point where we can't give them away. The corn has been attacked by Western Corn Rootworm. Little bastards. But we did get some corn and it is so sweet! The cherry tomatoes have been great. This was a bit of a learning experience as far as how to place plants in a way to get the most out of them in a small area. Our Cucumbers, Peppers and Eggplant got shaded out by our squash, but still produced enough for us. Broccoli sure takes up a lot of space for such a small return. Here are a few pics we took before the tomatoes started to turn.

Elkhart Sewage Lagoons

Birders love sewage. Well, birds love sewage ponds, lagoons, treatment centers so what is a birder to do? My favorite sewage lagoon is in Elkhart, KS. It laps its green, floaty-filled water against cement in the furthest reaches of southwest Kansas. If you are a Kansas birder you've heard of or been to this birder friendly lagoon. Unlike here in Chicago where sewage is guarded like Fort Knox, Elkhart has nice dirt roads outlining their lagoons. A window mount and scope are well suited for a nice leisurely drive around the lagoons. Many rarities have been seen there including, Red Phalarope, Little Gull, Eurasian Wigeon, Lesser Nighthawk, Sabine's Gull, etc...

A welcoming sign to birders!


Not as welcoming, but we know we are loved.


Maybe some of the locals aren't quite so sure what we are out here looking for? Well, yes, I guess they are Toyd Boyds!


A few birders checking out the lagoons. From left to right: Pete Janzen, Dave Williams, Brandon Percival

Burrowing Owls

So I'm planning a birding trip to Cimarron National Grasslands in a couple weeks and I'm going a little bird crazy. So I was looking over some old bird stuff and found a couple things I thought I'd post.

Back in the summer of 1996 I worked at the Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge in SW Oklahoma with the Student Conservation Association. I did a lot of different things there, but probably the most memorable was transplanting a family of Burrowing Owls from an unstable area and onto the refuge. This consisted of building a Burrowing Owl burrow, leg trapping the male Burrowing Owl and digging up the female and young birds and then after transplanting them, watching their behavior and supplementing their food with chilled (slow) walking sticks, grasshoppers, etc... It was quite an experience. The male took off, but the female stayed in her new burrow and raised 3 young (the total number we transplanted). Here are a couple of pics. I scanned them so they may not be the best quality.


Ken with male Burrowing Owl


Ken holding baby Burrowing Owl, cute huh?


A drawing I did of a young Burrowing Owl

El Santuario de Chimayo

Our New Mexico trip this spring took us to El Santuario de Chimayo, a small Catholic church northeast of Santa Fe. It is known for the pit inside the church which holds sand which is renowned for its healing capabilities. Visitors aren't allowed to take pictures inside the church, but the site Roadside America has a few shots of the pit and the crutches placed on the wall after people have been healed. And here are some more inside the church photos in this Flicker photo group.

Here is the official site -- Archdiocese of Santa Fe

Radio Lab

Sounds a bit like a cross between Stereolab and Radiohead, but it's actually an hour long NPR program. I just finished listening to season 3 while pulling weeds and now I'm on to seasons 1 and 2. They are incredible. I guess it can be compared to This American Life because they take a theme and do stories based on that theme (so yeah, it's a LOT like TAL), but it focuses on scientific answers/questions about very interesting topics like morality, memory, etc... I have to say each episode makes me want to write. Check it out -- Radio Lab

Wallace Stevens

Frogs Eat Butterflies. Snakes Eat Frogs. Hogs Eat Snakes. Men Eat Hogs.


It is true that the rivers went nosing like swine,
Tugging at banks, until they seemed
Bland belly-sounds in somnolent troughs,

That the air was heavy with the breath of these swine,
The breath of turgid summer, and
Heavy with thunder’s rattapallax,

That the man who erected this cabin, planted
This field, and tended it awhile,
Knew not the quirks of imagery,

That the hours of his indolent, arid days,
Grotesque with this nosing in banks,
This somnolence and rattapallax,

Seemed to suckle themselves on his arid being,
As the swine-like rivers suckled themselves
While they went seaward to the sea-mouths.

Recurve-billed Bushbird

from NationalGeographic.com

June 26, 2007—Call him the Mona Lisa of the bird kingdom.

The rare recurve-billed bushbird, recently rediscovered by scientists in Colombia after a 40-year absence, sports a curving beak that gives the illusion of an enigmatic smile.

This photograph, taken by a conservationist with the Colombia-based nonprofit Fundación ProAves, is the first ever taken of a live bushbird.

The elusive species had not been spotted between 1965 and 2004, due to its limited range and remote habitats. It was seen recently in Venezuela and in a region of northeastern Colombia, where it was photographed.

Researchers found the bird in a 250-acre (101-hectare) reserve next to the Torcoroma Holy Sanctuary near the Colombian town of Ocaña, where in 1709 locals claimed they saw the image of the Virgin Mary in a tree root. The forests of the sanctuary have been protected by Catholic Church authorities in the centuries since.

The researchers also found and photographed the extremely rare Perija parakeet, of which only 30 to 50 individuals likely survive.

Deforestation and wildfires for agriculture and grazing have denuded much of the birds' habitat, conservationists say.

"[A]s more and more remote areas are being settled, the bushbird reminds us how important it is to conserve as much natural habitat as we can," said Paul Salaman of the American Bird Conservancy.

"Who knows what wonderful biodiversity is being destroyed before it has had a chance to be discovered?"

Poems

I have a few poems up at Mipoesias.

Calculate your impact

tag

Read this question over on Sturgeon's Law.

Say someone asked me, "I kind of like poetry, but I don't know anything about contemporary poetry. Who should I read?"

My taste in "contemporary" poetry is fairly non-contemporary, but I consider anyone still writing in the 1960's to be contemporary, so with that in mind here is my list for today (in no particular order).

Robert Wrigley
Evan S. Connell
Robert Penn Warren
Larry Levis
Albert Goldbarth
William Matthews
Bob Hicok
James Wright
Ted Hughes
Galway Kinnell
James Dickey
Gary Snyder

poem

I have a poem up at Diagram.

The Victims

Poem

On the Persistence of the Letter as a Form


Dear murderous world, dear gawking heart,
I never wrote back to you, not one word

wrenched itself free of my fog-draped mind
to dab in ink the day's dull catalog

of ruin. Take back the ten-speed bike
which bent like a child's cheap toy

beneath me. Accept as your own
the guitar that was smashed over my brother,

who writes now from jail in Savannah,
who I cannot begin to answer. Here

is the beloved pet who died at my feet
and there, outside my window,

is where my mother buried it in a coffin
meant for a newborn. Upon

my family, raw and vigilant, visit numbness.
Of numbness I know enough.

And to you I've now written too much,
dear cloud of thalidomide,

dear spoon trembling at the mouth,
dear marble-eyed doll never answering back.

--Paul Guest

Meta-Free-Phor-All

tagged

from Sam of the Ten Thousand Things

Five poetry collections you may not have read but certainly must:

Galway Kinnell / The Book of Nightmares
Robert Penn Warren / Audubon: A Vision
Evan S. Connell / Notes From A Bottle Found On The Beach At Carmel
Robert Wrigley / Lives of the Animals
Larry Levis / The Widening Spell of the Leaves


The collections, for whatever reason, should be a bit off the beaten path. And need not have caused the earth to open and swallow you whole.

The Man Among Wolves

Check out the Wolf Man.

Go To Farmers Markets!

"According to latest data from US Department of Agriculture, home food production hit an all time low last year and was down a full 20% from the previous year. Meanwhile, despite recent trends, foods in the US have never traveled farther than they do now, over 1500 miles on average from field to fork, using up to 17 more fossil fuels than foods sourced locally."

This comes from Common Dreams.org . Check it out.

Music

I've been messing around with this music player from project playlist. It helps you find music on the internet and allows you to play it on your blog. I couldn't make it look any good, but it seems to be working for me. It should be down the page on the right. If anybody is reading this and has problems like slow loading or something could you tell me?

If it is working check out the song Together by The Raconteurs. I can't get enough of it!

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.

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Colbert, Colbert

Hurt