Nature III: animals, weather, geography, sports, etc.

Due to popular demand--well, two people actually, and me, now that I think about it--and the fact that we've been indundated with fine photos, here's the sequel to the sequel of the thread initially launched by Anna from Portland, Or-e-gun (little did she know): Nature III.

Visit with your poems, the poems of others, music, photos (of course), cartoons, prose extracts, problems with geographic pronunication (try Skaneateles on for size), sports results (high school, college, pro), recipes, flora and her sister fauna, bird (and tree) identification queries, brainstorms, fish stories, cat stories, shaggy dog stories, and so on and so forth.

Okay. Now that we're here, I've got a question, but it's tricky since I don't want to invade anyone's privacy, namely Anna's, whose virtual self is known as anna_in_pdx. I would have just quietly abided with this mystery (Oh, sure, Peter! Who are you kidding, you self-confessed raving extrovert?) if not for a caption on one of Tani's photos: "At 8,000 feet looking down at PDX."

I ask you, how can I let this pass without the inevitable question: What, pray tell, is pdx?

;-) Glad you got that pronunciation right!

It is the designation for Portland International Airport. ;-)

Yeah, see Tani's explanation - it's become a nickname for the city of Portland itself as well.

Also, I have absolutely no secrets from the Salon. Ask me anything.

Anything? Like Truth or Dare? ;-)

oooo, I love truth or dare!!!

Just popping in so that this thread will appear in my "Your Posts." Noting new surroundings, making design notes, deciding on paint colors, etc. Carry on.

I ate in Skaneatalis or Skaneateles once, in the summer. We went to Skaneatelis or Skaneateles to eat. That it was summer was routine; it happened every year.

Robert

As is our tradition whenever we begin a new nature thread ...

What the hell is he talking about?

... the latest census figures from the U.S. and around the globe; actual geographical locales of the virtual participants in the now departed (but never expunged) Nature: the Sequel (unless you people have been making up where you live):

So. Cal: 2
Or-e-gun: 2
Chicagoland: 2
New York City (this does include you Jane): 2

One each from upstate New York, Connecticut, New Joizey, Ohio, Tennessee, Arkansas, Georgia, and Angleterre (translate for those who don't know what this last means, Henri)

And three indeterminate (that rascal Mr. Durick aka Robert refuses to be pinned down)

Alas, it seems we lost one Michigander between thread one and two, two Buckeyes, two Texans (Gene moved, but what happened to aethercowboy?), one Belgian, and an Australian.

We need a book entry for legitimacy, I think, so here's two:

The Mountains of California by John Muir

and, apropos of nothing:

California Bloodstock by Terry Mcdonell

Hows about Wm . Vollmann's book on Imperial County? Oh I'm back in Michigan. What a change. Pancake flat. And monochromatick. As old Hank Kingsley would say: wow, wow, wow, wow.

Imperial by William T. Vollmann.

Michigan? My condolences, Por-Man.

However, there's always this.

You do seem to live in two worlds, Peter. I commiserate, having dwelled in different times and places so much while working on this or that book; there are times I'm not sure which is more "real." And that aside, of course, from childhood, the teenage years, this period or that we carry on our heads--and then suddenly catching my reflection in a mirrored department store window I can't turn away from fast enough before glimpsing a decrepit face with absolute horror, thinking, That's me!

I so resemble that remark!

Ouch. You put it so well. I catch a glimpse of a not particularly attractive fellow myself.

Message 306: anna_in_pdx
My favorite mountain in the whole world - beautiful pictures Tani! I see this mountain every clear day going home from work! It's directly east of Portland and you can see it as you cross bridges such as Hawthorne or Ross Island.

Anna,

I used to love my commute from Welches to PDX every day. I left the mountain around 5:30a would arrive in between Sandy and Boring on the back roads and the sunrises were outstanding from Jonsrud viewpoint. Then on the commute home the moonrise or the alpenglow was always stunning. I loved the journey and watching the mountain loom larger as I got closer to home. (I would post an alpenglow but don't want to get spanked)



Edited to alleviate any more confusion. ;-)

Ah...boss's been on vacation all week, new nature thread, and I come home to BBQ, mint juleps, and college baseball. Great freaking day.

alpenglow a reddish glow seen near sunset or sunrise on the summits of mountains

And now that Jane's home, and was nice enough not to give me any guff because I called her a New Yorker, let's have that post, Anna; first pic on the new thread.

I'll second the alpenglow. Seen it myself - rarely - on a few occasions in the High Sierra and on the summit of Greyback (San Gorgonio Mountain, elev. 11,502 - highest mountain in SoCal). Sublime, nouminous sight, alpenglow.

Um, Peter that was me Tani, responding to Anna's post from the last nature thread.

But, I will find it and post... LOVE my Hoodie! This is not the one I had in mind but cannot find it right now. Alas, it is so very beautiful I don't really give a rats... This is looking up from the White River Canyon and you can see the Palmer snow field and lift.

A little help, doubtless not much, P, from henry David Thoreau:

In the spring I burned over a hundred acres till the earth was sere and black, and by mid-summer this space was clad in a fresher and more luxuriant green than the surrounding even. Shall man then despair? Is he not a sproutland too, after never so many searings and witherings?

A wee bit more, is it more? on Alpenglow:
A redish glow seen near sunset or sunrise on the summits of mountains: specif., a reillumination sometimes observed after the summits have passed into shadow, supposed to be due to a curving downward (refraction) of the light rays from the west resulting from the cooling of the air.

Related words: alpen-horn, alpen-stock (a stout walkingstick, especially the ones favored by John Cowper Powys for his longwalks in the hills of upperstate N.Y. or North Wales).

Alpen-glow, though it gets a bit clumsy is an alpestrine phenomenon. Not subalpine.

ALP is the timeless wife of Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker - or Here Comes Everybody. Remember your very favorite Irish scribbler, EF.

While we're waiting for Anna, here's a glimpse of the real Woodstock, not the one you're always hearing about. From today's Kingston Freeman:

April Stool's Day Saturday in Woodstock

The Woodstock Dog Owners Group will hold its fifth annual April Stool's Day from 1 to 2:30 p.m. Saturday at Comeau Park.

Participants will meet at the park gazebo and then pick up trash and dog feces left behind during the winter months on the soccer and adjoining fields, as well as on the trails. Participants should bring their own trash bags, gloves and shovels.

>22 Porius:. Bad dogshit juxtaposition there, Peter. Things are coming fast now.

I'm not in despair, actually. And I certainly am a sproutland, despite (or maybe because of) all the searings and witherings. But thanks for trying to cheer me up.

Nice, Jane! So Jealous!

>21 highdesertlady:. Oh yes, I see now, Tani. Sorry. Not the first time I got confused, what with all the searings and witherings I've experienced. It's lovely, whatever the phenomenon is called.

>22 Porius:. Of course, I am curious as to what this upperstate N.Y. means. One of the trips I plan to take is to the town--whose name escapes me at the moment--where Edmund Wilson had a house, not far from Utica, I think. Prob'ly nothing there now but a convenience store/gas station with maybe a Wal-Mart up the road.

Wait, I got it: Talcottsville.

Ahhhh, as glorious as alpenglow on a Friday evening after a hard week's work...................

a mint julep.

Muchas gracias, Jane.

Yooperstate N.Y. of course. Up-State? Powys was friends with Theodore Dreiser and visited him sometimes in unusual ways - his means of transportation, ie. Read about it in Colin Wilson's OCCULT. More anon.

Baddawgshitbutjuxtaposition!?

Now you got me going, Peter, when I should be reclining somewhere, maybe with one of those juleps Henri pictured. Near Utica, I should have said (and so changed it, above), which I should have remembered, having recently read The Sixties by Edmund Wilson (not the book by Richard Avedon, which LT would have us believe), as per your suggestion. I also read The Occult by Colin Wilson, but in one of my withered periods; I don't recall a thing.

19 - :P I filled out my census the other day so I guess I am officially a New Yorker now.

21 - Fantastic! I am still amazed by mountains.

27 - :) I'm quite a few in at this point (damn these sports), please excuse my ramblings.

Go Tigers!

P, you know that I am loathe to tender suggestions but you should read J.C. Powys' AUTOBIOGRAPHY. It's really something. And go back to Wilson's OCCULT, if you still have it and read the bits about Powys and old Dreiser. Dreiser's musician brother Paul changed his name becuse he feared the German sounding of it. He called himself Dresser. He wrote popular songs and played the piano. You can still hear him in his studio saying out loud after finishing one of his tunes: "well Thee, listen to this." As his 300 pound frame crushed the piano bench.

30 - Which Tigers?

And finally: In a pleasant spring morning all men's sins are forgiven. Through our own recovered innocence we discern the innocence of our neighbors.

from H.D. Thoreau

Yes, I still have the Colin Wilson. I'll look it over. The other one I'll have to wait on, seeing as how I'm still trying to finish my own autobiography (part 2), and after that I have some reading matter sent to me, which I'll get to when the dust clears. Powys will have to wait.

The LSU Tigers, of course. Shaq's school.

Among other reasons I moved from Brooklyn to the so-called country over twenty years ago--but certainly not the least--was to get away from man- and dog-made noise. Not that I haven't had neighbors over the years who had barking dogs, though thankfully, not at the moment.

Another Reason Why I Don't Keep a Gun in the House

The neighbors' dog will not stop barking.
He is barking the same high, rhythmic bark
that he barks every time they leave the house.
They must switch him on on their way out.

The neighbors' dog will not stop barking.
I close all the windows in the house
and put on a Beethoven symphony full blast
but I can still hear him muffled under the music,
barking, barking, barking,

and now I can see him sitting in the orchestra,
his head raised confidently as if Beethoven
had included a part for barking dog.

When the record finally ends he is still barking,
sitting there in the oboe section barking,
his eyes fixed on the conductor who is
entreating him with his baton

while the other musicians listen in respectful
silence to the famous barking dog solo,
that endless coda that first established
Beethoven as an innovative genius.

Billy Collins

On the nature front, I have about two dozen deep blue hyacinths in my flower garden that sit on either side of my front porch. They get direct sun and as a result scent my entrance with an amazing fragrance, which I enjoy every year.

On the nurture front, my 14 year old daughter just left to spend spring break in Greece and Rome with her philosophy class. I will be holding my breath until she's back.

Leave off for a day or two and everybody moves. I wonder if it is me. Lots of nature breaking out all over in Arkansas and as for nature type books I would have to recommend The Land God Made in Anger: Reflections on a Journey through South West Africa by Jon-Manchip White.

Gorgeous day here in the northeast; seventy-five degrees and feels so perfect I'm tempted to say the greatest day ever. But I'm too old for that effusion now, so let's just sat the equal of any day ever.

Hey, I got back to the thread yesterday with the denizens in open rebellion. Starting the new thread quieted them down, and then we went on a mad ride with the new thread, shot up the most popular chart and made it into the top ten by nightfall. People just love nature, I guess.

No, Peter... we're just too interesting not to notice.

2:30pm 36 degrees a good 6" of snow left. ugh!

As unbelievable as it seemed that spring would finally, actually, arrive here, your weather report from the high desert sounds equally unbelievable. When does spring usually begin there, anyway?

At this rate... never! We have had snow on the ground almost consistently since October 3rd. Hence, I am so done... so very done.

BUT! The days are longer and my SADD is better. AND it's not damp & dank like in the valley. According to my weather bug the valley is experiencing 90% humidity and we are at a mere 78%. It does make a HUGE difference.

As much as I love being up here, I am wishing today that I was in the Mojave or somewhere equally warm. Now I know why snowbirds leave every year.

The 7 day forecast is looking like upper 40s with mixed showers through the weekend and then mostly cloudy with highs in the upper 40s and low to mid 50s. I can get behind that. Just no more snow, puleez! ;-)

>36 copyedit52:, Peter:

I'm tempted to say the greatest day ever. But I'm too old for that effusion now, so let's just sat the equal of any day ever

Actually, my uncle and I say the second best . . . . because there must have been one better.

Spring seems to have sprung in Chicago, but, Chicagoan that I am, I continue to doubt and expect another frost and snow. In the interim, my dogs are loving the opportunity to spend long periods outside barking at "whatever".

Tipton Plimsoll stood on the terrace, moodily regarding the rolling parkland that spread itself before his lack-lustre eyes. As usual in this smiling expanse of green turf and noble trees, a certain number of cows, some brown, some piebald, were stoking up and getting their vitamins, and he glowered at them like a man who had got something against cows. And when a bee buzzed passed his nose, his gesture of annoyance showed that he was not any too sold on bees either. The hour was half-past two, and lunch had come to an end some few minutes earlier.

from FULL MOON by P.G. Wodehouse.

>40 LisaCurcio:. Glad you found us, Lisa. Doesn't the baseball season start soon? One of these days when I'm in Chicago, I should go to Wrigley Field--not because I'm a fan of baseball anymore, but because I'm a fan of ambience. I'd like to add Wrigley to my list of funky baseball venues, which currently include Ebbets Field (long since torn down) and Fenway Park.

>41 Porius:. That's not half bad, Peter. Piques my interest. Another name to add to the growing list.

anna_in_pdx reviewed my book today. I won't reveal here what she said except to say that I hope she still likes me.

In sporting news:

Dook plays Butler tomorrow night for the men's nat'l champeenship. The UConn women (37-0, winners of 77 straight) play Baylor today in the women's final four.

Also: Sidney's Candy won the Santa Anita Derby by 4 1/2 lengths over a squabbling field yesterday. But the Kentucky Derby favorite will likely be Eskendereya, who ran away from the other colts in the Wood Memorial at Aqueduct, winning by 10 lengths.

>42 copyedit52:: From what I hear, tomorrow is opening day! Sox at home are scheduled to have beautiful weather, which is somehow wrong for any opening day in Chicago. Cubs home opener is next Monday--we can only hope that it will be a traditional miserable day.

Actually, baseball bores me to tears, but it is hard to see a newspaper at this time of year without learning these things.

The only Wodehouse I have read is the Jeeves stories. How are the others? Jeeves is LOL funny, in my opinion.

It could that this erudite crowd doesn't watch network TV, but I do, including House, which is a popular show. It's an ensemble piece, but the main interest is of course Dr. Gregory House himself: Hugh Laurie. Before he was famous, Laurie also played a repeating part in the BBC (I think it is) series about Jeeves; quite a different role, not as Jeeves, but as his clownish master. I checked a bunch out through Netflix; they weren't bad.

;-) Seriously, me? erudite? lmao.

Am more of a NCIS kinda gal. Never got into House, mostly 'cause there were other things on at same time, I suppose.

On the warmer side of things... It's 31! I have a bird slow cookin' in the kitchen, my sous chef, Mama, is peeling potatoes, Papa is napping and it couldn't be more of a comfort food kinda day.

Rat Basketball - no I'm not kidding.

Preliminary reports out of Mexicali: 6.9 earthquake. We felt it for about 45 seconds up here 30 miles east of L.A. We were on the patio, and I told my friend, this is either a small one centered right beneath us, or a large one far away. Haven't seen anything yet on the news from Mexicali. I hope people down there are okay. News reports are saying it was felt as far east as Phoenix and as far north into Central CA.

Jeeves is fine. Beach the butler is also. I've had much pleasure from old P.G.W. Life at Blandings. Psmith. Golf stories. You name it, and I'm all for it. One of his great descriptions: he looks like a sheep with a secret sorrow. Or they are the - sons of toil buried under tuns of soil.

Gadszooks, my good friend coaches a professional basketball team down there in Mexicali, I hope they're alright.

It looks like it hit, from the maps I'm seeing them put up, about 30-45 miles south of Mexicali. It was a roller for sure. Still waiting for word and images from Mexicali.

Scratch, that, Por, it was 19 miles southeast of Mexicali. Fingers crossed for your friend man.

My wife, aka our South American correspondent, tells me she felt an odd rumbling sound when one of the aftershooks hit Chile, lasting about 30 or so seconds. She was on a high floor in the Santiago hotel and felt the building wobble as the bed moved on the floor.

More from PGW:

Cold is the ogre which drives all beautiful things into hiding. Below the surface of a frost-bound garden there lurk hidden bulbs which are only biding their time to burst forth in a riot of laughing color (unless the gardener has planted them upside down) but shivering Nature dare not put forth her flowers till the ogre has gone. Not otherwise does cold suppress love. A man in an open cart on an English Spring night may continue to be in love, but love is not the emotion uppermost in his bosom. It shrinks within him and waits for better times.

from SOMETHING NEW

CNN is calling it 7.2 now... awful.

Yikes. The MIL in east LA said they felt it for a quite a while.

Wondering if Baja Norte highways will be passable for my brother and sister-in-law next month. They may have to take the ferry over to mainland.

My sister-in-law's brother lives in Salton City. I look at the map at the link below and wonder how much damage there will be for their drive home. They have a 34' fifth wheel to haul over those wonder Baja highways.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2010/04/20-million-people-felt-72-mexicali...;

Edited to add: Now, after following the link you cannot see Salton City very well.. it is the town right on the west side of Salton Lake. If 'Rique felt it, I have to believe they did too. I am waiting to hear from them.

I missed this quake by a few days as I am in Detroit currently. I was in the Northridge one of 1994 or was it 93? It's no joke. Was one of the strangest experiences of my 61 years. What a shake-up it was.

I was wondering about that, Peter, figuring San Diego had to feel it.

they felt a shaking but not much more - shaken not stirred.

Hugh Laurie - in the Uk he is known primarily as a comedian. He rose to fame in the generation of comedians that emerged during the Thatcher era (his oft times comedy partner Stephen Fry, Rowan Atkinson, Mel Smith & Griff Rhys Jones, Ade Edmondson & Rik Mayall).

He is probably best known here for both his Wooster and his Prince George and Lieutenant George in subsequent series of Blackadder ( a well regarded english comedy series starring Rown Atkinson).

In all his comedy roles he plays a Wooster like character, so to see him in a serious, even 'screen hero' type of role seems odd to many.

Earthquakes - I have only experienced one earthquake in my 13 years in the UK. Back in Wellington, New Zealand, sitting on 2 faultlines, it was a regular occurrence - at least one noticeable shake every 6 months. It was typical to hear the sound like a lorry/truck coming towards the house, then a few little shudders followed by a shake of varying magnitude.

On 5 or 6 occasions it was bad enough for us to seek shelter under doorways or desks (as we had been taught to do from early schooldays).

As a copy editor I'm expected to fact-check (as well as deal with grammar, style, etc.): places, street names, and so on are particularly important in the mystery genre, which is usually situated in actual locales; dates, names, and anarchronisms come into play with historical fiction, and in so-called alternative history, a subset of science fiction; and so on. In which sense the often rare and obstruse medical conditions cited in the TV show House leave me flabbergasted. The few conditions I actually know about (as well as House's asides about music and current events) are accurate, so the other stuff might well be too. They must have an army of researchers working behind the scenes, or else some very good people.

Apropos of which, a personal note, and hopefully the first and last comment I'll make on Anna's review of my book, which was featured among the hot reviews yesterday and so far this morning. Anna is entitled to her perceptions, of course (and I do like the four and a half stars she gave the book), but I don't agree that all the male characters in the book are essentially the same. In fact, I don't agree with that assessment at all.

My son and I watch House semi-regularly. We like to synchronize our watches with House's epiphany where his sidekick Wilson says something unrelated and he suddenly realizes what's wrong with the patient. It's usually about 15 minutes before the end of the show.

Bookstore news:

Some sad (though not dire) news for Seattlelites and doubtless other Northwest book lovers: the Elliott Bay Book Company is moving from its present locale near Pioneer Square to Capitol Hill (I'm not sure where); because of the high rent, I was told. Why sad if it's merely relocating? Well, if you know that old bookstore, you'll recall its wonderful wooden interior and the funky little nooks created by the shelves, with benches here and there.

On the other hand, since it's Seattle, perhaps there'll be a coffeehouse in the reconstituted store.

Books? We can all gather around and watch obama make 19ft jump shots and play powderpuffbasketball. While his cronies geitner, summers, rubin, paulsen, and the rest of the fellas spend the taxpayers money.

As long as I'm in a good mood, we might have done better with our thumbs for copyeditfiftytwo's reviews. Do we wake or sleep?

He wasn't exactly thrilled with pdxAnnas review, but to paraphrase Oscar Wilde: the only bad press release is an obituary. The reviews might have had a longer hangtime during the week rather than the slower weekend.

Holy Toledo! Or Fort Wayne, for that matter. Your last entry doesn't sound at all like you, Peter. I'm guessing it has something to do with being back in Detroit: city of wide, naked boulevards. And how's nature doing in Motown?

65: Actually, an obit is one of the best press releases an author can have in terms of sales and interest. Unfortunately the royalties no longer do him any good, but you can't have everything.

I can tell you're trying to cheer me up, Anna. It won't do any good; I'm feeling like Greg House today. A few years ago, after my spinal operation, my niece saw me walking around with a cane and suddenly, because I reminded her of House, treated me like a celebrity.

It would be hard to convince old Steve King that if the car had killed him he would be none the worse for the collision. Oscar meant, as you know all-too-well A-pdx, that the mere sight of Copy's face or name is better than the alternative.

68: You are definitely not anything like Gregory House. Sorry. You are much too gregarious and friendly.

69: I thought an author was only supposed to be concerned with immortality in his/her works - you're saying they would rather attain this while still alive? Boy.

It's Monday and the day is mine own. What to do, what to do? The weather here in dear dirty Detroit is splendidious. Carolina blue skies, friendly zeffers, the green a-greening, the robins doing their funny hop, the noble trees a-leafing (well, not quite), a peregrine falcon cirk-ling in search of a rodental type - a plu-perfect Spring day here in the Motor City. Even though the assembly line at Ford/Wixom is moving at glacial speed.

You got any opinions on Elmore Leonard, Peter?

"Dutch" Leonard is the pride of Mi. but I'm afraid I am innocent of his work. I am almost immune to suspense and that sort of thing. I'll often read a book backwards - this won't do for Leonard and his brothers-in-arms. But like Barkis I am ever and always willing.

It steamrolls when it comes steamrolling time, says Charles Fort.

The Morris Dances differ somewhat from the Sword, and Mumming Dances. The performances as a rule take place in the Spring, or early Summer, chiefly May, and Whitsuntide. The dances retain little or no trace of dramatic action but are dances pure and simple. The performers, generally six in number, are attired in white elaborately-pleated shirts, decked with ribbons, white mole-skin trousers, with bells at the knee, and beaver hats adorned with ribbons and flowers. The leader carries a sword, on the point of which is generally impaled a cake; during the dancing slices of this cake are distributed to the lookers on, who are supposed to make a contribution to the 'Treasury,' a money box carried by an individual (Timmy Geitner?) called a squire, or Clown, dressed in motley, and bearing in the other hand a stick with a bladder at one end, and a cow's tail at the other.
In some forms of the dance there is a 'Lord' and a 'Lady,' who carry 'Maces' of office; these maces are short staves, with a transverse piece at the top, and a hoop over it. The whole is decorated with ribbons and flowers, and bears a curious resemblance to the CRUX ANSATA. In certain figures of the dance the performers carry handkerchiefs, in others, wands, painted with the colours of the village to which they belong; the dances are always more or less elaborate in form.

from RITUAL TO ROMANCE
Jessie L. Weston
1920

Awaiting Spring on the High Desert...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0B7sH5QLyXY

Superb, Tani. If I didn't know Porius was in Detroit (I take his word on it), I'da thought the two of you planned that presentation.

Heigh-ho tc53591. If you look closely you can spot old Powys careering over hill and dale with one of his oaken walking sticks.

And Doubting Peter. How can I convince you that I am who I am?

I do accept that you are who you say you are, Peter. I have prima facie evidence (which I can't say for the rest of you). I was just idly wondering how anyone hereabouts can know that you're where you say you are.

'Twas my Celtic self showing... ;-)

Perhaps a Shillelagh, Porius?

As I sat there one sunny morning when the water was peculiarly translucent. I saw a dark shadow moving swiftly over the bottom. It was the first sign of life I had seen in this lake, whose shores seemed to yield little but washed-in beer cans. By and by the gliding shadow ceased to scurry from stone to stone over the bottom. Unexpectedly, it headed almost directly for me. A furry nose with gray whiskers broke the surface. Below the whiskers green water foliage trailed out in an inverted V as long as his body. A muskrat still lived in the lake. He was bringing in his breakfast.
I sat very still in the strips of sunlight under the pier. To my surprise the muskrat came almost to my feet with his little breakfast of greens. He was young , and it rapidly became obvious to me that he was laboring under an illusion of his own, and that he thought animals and men were still living in the Garden of Eden. He gave me a friendly glance from time to time as he nibbled his greens. Once, even, he went out into the lake again and returned to my feet with more greens. He had not, it seemed, heard very much about men. I shuddered. Only the evening before I had heard a man describe with triumphant enthusiasm how he had killed a rat in the garden because the creature had dared to nibble his petunias. He had even showed me the murder weapon, a sharp-edged brick.
On this pleasant shore a war existed and would go on until nothing remained but man. Yet this creature with the gray , appealing face wanted very little: a strip of shore to coast up and down, sunlight and moonlight, some weeds from the deep water. He was an edge-of-the-world dweller, caught between a vanishing forest and a deep lake preempted by unpredictable machines full of chopping blades. He eyed me nearsightedly, a green leaf poised in his mouth. Plainly he had come with some poorly instructed memory about the lion and the lamb.
"You had better run away now," I said softly, making no movement in the shafts of light. "You are in the wrong universe and must not make this mistake again. I am really a very terrible and cunning beast. I can throw stones." With this I dropped a little pebble at hi feet.
He looked at me half blindly, with eyes much better adjusted to the wavering shadows of his lake bottom than to sight in the open air. He made almost as if to take the pebble up into his forepaws. Then a thought seemed to cross his mind - a thought perhaps telepathically received, as Freud once hinted, in the dark world below and before man, a whisper of ancient disaster heard in the depths of a burrow. Perhaps after all this was not Eden. His nose twitched carefully; he edged toward the water.
As he vanished in an oncoming wave, there went with him a natural world, distinct from the world of girls and motorboats, distinct from the world of the professor holding to reality by some great snowshoe effort in his study. My muskrat's shore-line universe was edged with the dark wall of hills on one side and the waspish drone of motors farther out, but it was a world of sunlight he had taken down into the water weeds. It hovered there, waiting for my disappearance. I walked away, obscurely pleased that darkness had not gained on life by any act of mine. In so many words, I thought, how natural is "natural" - and is there anything we can call a natural world at all?

from THE FIRMAMENT OF TIME, Ch:6, HOW NATURAL IS ''NATURAL"
Loren Eiseley 1984

Very nice, Peter. And now for some bookkeeping (aka citations):

The Firmament of Time by Loren Eiseley

From Ritual to Romance by Jessie L. Weston

Something New, by P.G. Wodehouse

Full Moon by P.G. Wodehouse

There's a SOMETHING FRESH and a
http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/2042

Okay. I went back and made the change. Now, anyone reading the thread won't have a notion about what we're "on about," as the Anglics say.

Even worse than Bud Selig's effort:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9eDzJ_K9i_0

Oh yeah, that's right: beisbol. Ever since ... a long time ago, I lost interest in the sport.

I do love geography, thinking about places I've been and would like to be, imagining myself there. One of the first questions I ask people when we meet, if not the first is: "Where're you from?"

Here's a poem I can relate to:

Topography

After we flew across the country we
got in bed, laid our bodies
delicately together, like maps laid
face to face, East to West, my
San Francisco against your New York, your
Fire Island against my Sonoma, my
New Orleans deep in your Texas, your Idaho
bright on my Great Lakes, my Kansas
burning against your Kansas your Kansas
burning against my Kansas, your Eastern
Standard Time pressing into my
Pacific Time, my Mountain Time
beating against your Central Time, your
sun rising swiftly from the right my
sun rising swiftly from the left your
moon rising slowly from the left my
moon rising slowly from the right until
all four bodies of the sky
burn above us, sealing us together,
all our cities twin cities,
all our states united, one
nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Sharon Olds

So just.

208. The spectacle of the great changes which annually pass over the face of the earth has powerfully impressed the minds of men in all ages, and stirred them to meditate on the causes of transformations so vast and wonderful. Their curiosity has not been purely disinterested; for even the savage cannot fail to perceive how intimately his own life is bound up with the life of Nature, and how the same processes which freeze the stream and strip the earth of vegetation menace him with extinction. At a certain stage of development men seem to have imagined that the means of averting the threatened calamity were in their own hands, and that they could hasten or retard the flight of the seasons by magick art. Accordingly they performed ceremonies and recited spells to make the rain to fall, the sun to shine, animals to multiply, and the fruits of the earth to grow. In course of time the slow advance of knowledge, which has dispelled so many cherished illusions, convinced at least the most thoughtful portion of mankind that the alternations of summer and winter, of spring and autumn, were not merely the result of their own magickal rites, but some deeper cause, some mightier power, was at work behind the shifting scenes of Nature. They now pictured to themselves the growth and decay of vegetation, the birth and death of living creatures, as effects of the waxing or waning strength of divine beings, of gods and goddesses, who were born and died, who married and begot children, on the pattern of human life.

Thus the old magical theory of seasons was displaced, or rather supplemented , by a religious theory. For although men now attributed the annual cycle of change primarily to corresponding changes in their deities, they still thought that by performing certain magickal rites they could aid the god, who was the principle of life, in his struggle with the opposing principle of death. They imagined that they could recruit his failing energies and even raise him from the dead. The ceremonies which they observed for this purpose were in substance a dramatic representation of the natural processes which they wished to facilitate; for it is a familiar tenet of magick that you can produce any desired effect by merely imitating it. And as they now explained their fluctuations of growth and decay, of reproduction and dissolution, by the marriage, the death, and the rebirth or revival of the gods, their religious or rather magickal dramas turned in great measure on these themes. They set forth the fruitful union of the powers of fertility, the sad death of one at least of the divine partners, and his joyful resurrection. Thus a religious theory was blended with a magickal practice. The combination is familiar in history. Indeed, few religions have ever succeeded in wholly extricating themselves from the old trammels of magick. The inconsistency of acting on two opposing principles, however it may vex the soul of the philosopher, rarely troubles the common man; indeed he is seldom even aware of it. His affair is to act, not to analyse the motives of his action. If mankind had always been logical and wise, history would not be a long chronicle of folly and crime.

Of the changes which the seasons bring with them, the most striking within the temperate zone are those which affect vegetation. The influence of the seasons on animals, though great, is not so nearly manifest. Hence it is natural that in the magickal dramas designed to dispel winter and bring back spring the emphasis should be laid on vegetation, and that trees and plants should figure in them more prominently than beasts and birds. Yet the two sides of life, the vegetable and the animal, were not dissociated in the minds of those who observed the ceremonies. Indeed they commonly believed that the tie between the animal and the vegetable world was even closer than it really is; hence they often combined the dramatic representation of reviving plants with a real or a dramatic union of the sexes for the purpose of furthering at the same time and by the same act the multiplication of the fruits, of animals, and of men. To them the principle of life and fertility, whether animal or vegetable, was one and indivisible. To live and to cause to live, to eat and to beget children, these were the primary wants of men in the past, and they will be the primary wants of men in the future so long as the world lasts. Other things may be added to enrich and beautify human life, but unless these wants are first satisfied, humanity itself must cease to exist. These two things, therefore, food and children, were what men chiefly sought to procure by the performance of magickal rites for the regulation of the seasons.
Nowhere, apparently, have these rites been more widely and solemnly celebrated than in the lands which border the Eastern Mediterranean. Under the names of Osiris, Tammuz, Adonis, and Attis, the peoples of Egypt and Western Asia represented the yearly decay and revival of life, especially of vegetable life, which they personified as a god who annually died and rose again from the dead. In name and detail the rites varied from place to place: in substance they were the same.

from THE GOLDEN BOUGH
Part 4 - Dying and Reviving Gods
Sir James George Frazer

I am watching it snow as we speak. Ha! It's supposed to be 60 tomorrow. I'll believes it when I sees it.

In keeping with the theme of (my elusive) spring :

Ostara

88: I just bought that at the bookstore. Don't know when I will get around to reading it. I had been in the Mythology aisle to get my son Greek Mythology by Edith Hamilton.

TAMMUZ

209. In the pantheon of the Sumerians of Southern Babylonia Tammuz appears to have been one of the oldest, though certainly not one of the most important figures. His name consists of a Sumerian phrase meaning "true son" or, in a fuller form, "true son of the deep water," and among the inscribed Sumerian texts which have survived the wreck of empires are a number of hymns in his honour.

In the religious literature of Babylonia Tammuz appears as the youthful spouse or lover of Ishtar, the great mother goddess, the embodiment of the reproductive energies of nature. The references to their connection with each other in myth and ritual are both fragmentary and obscure, but we gather from them that Tammuz was believed to die, passing away from the cheerful earth to the gloomy subterranean world, and that his divine mistress journeyed in quest of him "to the land from which there is no returning, to the house of darkness, where dust lies on door and bolt." During her absence the passion of love ceased to operate: men and beasts alike forgot to reproduce their kinds: all life was threatened with extinction. So intimately bound up with the goddess were the sexual functions of the whole animal kingdom that without her presence they could not be discharged. A messenger of the great god Ea was accordingly despatched to rescue the goddess on whom so much depended. The stern queen of the infernal regions, Allatu or Eresh-Kigal by name, reluctantly allowed Ishtar to be sprinkled with the Water of Life and to depart, in company probably with her lover Tammuz, that the two might return together to the upper world, and that with their return all nature might revive.
Laments for the departed Tammuz are contained in several Babylonian hymns, which liken him to plants that quickly fade. He is

"A tamarisk that in the garden has drunk no water,
Whose crown in the field has brought forth no blossom.

A willow that rejoyced not by the watercourse,
A willow whose roots were torn up.
A herb that in the garden had drunk no water.

His death appears to have been annually mourned, to the shrill musick of flutes, by men and women about midsummer in the month named after him, the month of Tammuz. The dirges were seemingly chanted over an effigy of the dead god, which was washed with pure water, annointed with oil, and clad in a red robe, while the fumes of incense rose into the air, as if to stir his dormant senses by their pungent fragrance and wake him from the sleep of death.

More from Dying and Reviving Gods
THE GOLDEN BOUGH
Sir James George Frazer

Birth, death, sex (of course), regeneration, mythology ... I'm hesitant to even make the following prosaic entry. But someone 's gotta be the bad guy:

Recent sports news:

Duke beat Butler for the nat'l men's champeenship, which made almost no one happy: 61-59

Inter Milan beat CSKA Moscow 1-0, winning both games and thus moving into the Champions League semifinals

Barcelona beat Arsenal 4-1, with Lionel Messi scoring all four goals, also moving into the semifinals

The Connecticut and Stanford women play for the nat'l champeenship tonight

Butler played some great basketball last night. They simply didn't shoot it well enough to beat Duke. But they showed the basketball world something of the uppermost importance. Let's just hope they have what it takes to learn from the valiant Bulldogs. Duke was a deserving winner though, Zouback was a one man wrecking crew and Singler and Scheyer showed their great value.

Not prosaic at all Peter.

I stand corrected, Coach.

I was as surprised as anyone when Butler beat Syracuse, though some of the Orange bench fill-ins played poorly that night. But then the Bulldogs went on and won again, twice, and then almost pulled this one out. Looked like half an inch lower on the backboard and that heave would have ricocheted in. But yeah, Duke looked stronger most of the game.

Butler went eight minutes-plus in the last ten minutes of the game w/out scoring a bucket, and yet somehow managed to hang in there. Without that cold shooting streak, they probably win going away. Spectacular game.

Henri: You got any earthquake reports to share with us?

Only what's amazing to me is how little coverage this earthquake is garnering in the media. Granted, the last count I heard was "only" two people dead, but there's lots of destruction and resultant flooding south of the border, from what I've seen. Calexico, CA, just on the other side of Mexicali, got hit pretty hard (shattered glass all over the place, but no collapsed structures from what I've seen, as in Mexicali) which I guess could possibly be attributed to the stricter building codes north of the border? Not sure.

which I guess could possibly be attributed to the stricter building codes north of the border?

Absolutely. CA has some of the most strict building codes in the world. The architectural licensing exam has an entire extra section for CA and FL.

Oak-logs will warm you well,
That are old and dry;
Logs of pine will sweetly smell
But the sparks will fly.

Birch-logs will burn too fast,
Chestnut scarce at all;
Hawthorn-logs are good to last -
Cut them in the fall.

Holly-logs will burn like wax,
You may burn them green;
Elm-logs like to smoldering flax,
No flame to be seen.

Beech-logs for winter time,
Yew-logs as well;
Green elder-logs it is a crime
For any man to sell.

Pear-logs and apple-logs,
They will scent your room,
Cherry-logs across the dogs
Smell like flower of bloom.

Ash-logs, smooth and gray,
Burn them green or old,
Buy up all that come your way -
Worth their weight in gold.

To be found in Standish O'Grady's translation of E.M. Hull's POEM BOOK OF THE GAEL.

The tinker can't mend kettle nor pot
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wml3V-maDeA&feature=fvw

Connecticut (39-0) rallied from an eight-point halftime deficit last night to defeat Stanford, 53-47, at the Alamodome in San Antonio. Maya Moore scored 18 of her 23 points in the second half to lead the Huskies to their 78th straight victory and second straight unbeaten season.

Was I the one who opened this whole sports thing? I mean, there's something to report on every day. Basketball, soccer, and now baseball ... Lisa wants me to cover curling. Rat basketball: Jane didn't exactly say she wants daily scores, but if the rats are from Louisiana, yeah, she prob'ly will. Cricket for zenomax? Beach volleyball for Enrique? The NBA playoffs, the NHL. The Tour de France. The World Cup. NFL summer camp. Where does it end?

Enough already. I'm taking a vacation from sports. No sports for a month. Anyone out there want sports, report on it yourself.

I heard on NPR today that Chicago is one of the most bicycle friendly cities, and that our inimitable Richard II is the most bicycle friendly mayor.

Yesterday, everyone and his or her brother was riding bikes to work. Today, twenty degrees colder, rainy and much windier with a lovely stiff breeze blowing from the low 40 degree water of Lake Michigan--a few lonely bikers wearing foul weather gear. And, as I expected, snow in the forecast for tonight.

Already warm at eleven o'clock. They say it'll hit 85 degrees this afternoon; not that I like it when it's that far beyond room temperature. But it's lovely outside, the forsythias along the road as yellow as they'll ever be, the tiny pastel buds on the bigger trees ... I hope the bird that built a nest in the crook of the rain drain above where I sometimes sit comes back this year. The wasps, of course, will create a hive somewhere beneath an overhang; they always do, a different place each time. Live and let live, I say.

Discover thou what it is, the strong creature from before the flood/Without flesh without bone without vein without blood . . . It frequently comes proceeding from the heat of the Sun and the coldness of the Moon/ . . . One being has prepared it out of all creatures, by a tremendous blast.

Taliesin's Riddle of the Week

104: Wind?

It was really windy in Portland on Monday - gusts going every which direction. Today we have a bit of sun but tomorrow we're back to rain again. Our spectacular early spring flowers are mostly on the sidewalks now.

Wind. Rainy here in Detroit area. Monochromatick. The flora has not yet peeped or had the slightest inclination to bloom. But with all this rain they must be right around the corner. Or even to budd as it were.

Signs that catch my eye while driving around:

Outside a self-service car wash:

A CLEAN CAR GOES FAR

In front of a furniture warehouse:

MARCH INTO SPRING

At the entrance to a New Age bookstore:

CALM
This way--->

We've got wind down under as well, gusty and all alive. The air here's gone thin and crisp; the sunlight and shadows likewise. Truly, the summer is ended.

Good to hear from you again, ChocolateMuse. Except for one English bloke, we tend to be quite American. And your atmospheric description has a lyrical touch as well, which is a bonus.

Thanks Peter - I religiously read this thread, but don't often feel I can contribute much. But it's such a glorious autumn day down here I couldn't resist. :)

Yeah, Pierre, ChocMuse would much rather write #1 Hot Reviews than contribute here.

I was about to pimp your Murakami piece (Peter, you do need to read you some Haruki Murakami - I don't care if he's not dead!) but alas, it was already #1 and in no need of pimpage, so I figured I'd abstain.

90 degrees today. Kids were in the above ground pool all day. Glorious. I had to work...but still...

>110 ChocolateMuse:. We get crisp too, at least here in the Northeast, which I decidedly missed when I lived in California; one reason I headed back East: those glorious autumn days. But I confess that I've never observed the air as thinner then, though it makes sense. I'll have to watch for it ... in about six months.

>111 absurdeist:. Actually, I did read one Murakami, mon frere, and now choose to withhold my opinion, given the fact that when I told you I didn't care for encyclopedic writers, vis-a-vis whatshisname, it seemed I ruffled you significantly. And not long afterward you announced that you might well dissolve le Salon Litteraire du Peuple pour le Peuple! A coincidence? Perhaps.

Puh-lease Pierre.

Henri feasts on Melodrama, intrigue, controversy, conflict, and disorder and disorders of all types.

If Henri's gonna dissolve anything, it will be an aspirin on his lengua.

You know, it occurs to me, Henri, that you and I might be the same enneagramatic type: the Glutton. A metaphoric label, but no less true for that.

In the spirit of theaelizabet's message #34, and because I have a daughter too, more of Sharon Olds:

The Daughter Goes to Camp

In the taxi alone, home from the airport,
I could not believe you were gone. My palm kept
creeping over the smooth plastic
to find your strong meaty little hand and
squeeze it, find your narrow thigh in the
noble ribbing of the corduroy,
straight and regular as anything in nature, to
find the slack cool cheek of a
child in the heat of a summer morning—
nothing, nothing, waves of bawling
hitting me in hot flashes like some
change of life, some boiling wave
rising in me toward your body, toward
where it should have been on the seat, your
brow curved like a cereal bowl, your
eyes dark with massed crystals like the
magnified scales of a butterfly's wing, the
delicate feelers of your limp hair,
floods of blood rising in my face as I
tried to reassemble the hot
gritty molecules in the car, to
make you appear like a holograph
on the back seat, pull you out of nothing
as I once did—but you were really gone,
the cab glossy as a slit caul out of
which you had slipped, the air glittering
electric with escape as it does in the room at a birth.

Brrrrrr! This morning it is 26 and winds are between 30 and 40. Not sure what the gusts are at this point.

On a warmer note... Yesterday as I was sitting on the porch, basking in the warmth of a beautiful spring morning, I gazed up to the sky and was greeted by the glow of the sun illuminating the tail feathers of an American Bald Eagle making lazy circles. I did have my phone camera with me, however, it was so high up that I was unable to capture any photos. Alas, the vivid memories will have to suffice.

Our temps yesterday reached 60 and I found at least a half dozen more bulbs peeking up throughout the property.

Will spring ever truly arrive on the high desert? Eventually, I am sure, but this has been the longest winter of my life.

Olds is excellent.

TWO POEMS BY DEREK WALCOTT

There was no "affair," it was all one-sided.
Bats fretted the treetops then pitched like darts
from the pines. At lunch an invisible presence presided
over the wines and salads as, in fits and starts,
a sinuous organ sobbed to the Bay of the Saracens
flecked with gulls' feathers or the sails of yachts,
yet balance and protection made no sense.
By the open-air table where I sat alone
a flock of chattering girls passed, premature sirens
fleeing like pipers from the sudden thought of a stone.
Emerald ducks paddled and stabbed their bills
in the cool dark well sacred to Arethusa.
I wondered in the inching sun how it was known
to the ferry's horn, the pines, the Bay's azure hills
and the jeering screaming girls that I would lose her
or to an accordion's wandering sob and moan
through the coiled, serpentine alleys of Siracusa.

Who has removed the typewriter from my desk,
so that I am a musician without his piano
with emptiness ahead as clear and grotesque
as another spring? My veins bud, and I am so
full of poems, a wastebasket of black wire!
The notes outside are visible; sparrows will
line antennae like staves, the way springs were,
but the roofs are cold and the great gray river
where a liner glides, huge as a winter hill,
moves imperceptibly like the accumulating
years. I have no reason to forgive her
for what I brought on myself. I am past hating,
past the longing for Italy where blowing snow
absolves and whitens a kneeling mountain range
outside Milan. Through glass, I am waiting
for the sound of a bird to unhinge the beginning
of spring, but my hands, my work, feel strange
without the rusty music of my machine. No words
for the arctic liner moving down the Hudson, for the mange
of old snow molting from the roofs. No poems. No birds.

Layers and layers of slate gray clouds. Nipping and eager winds out of the NW. 42 degrees. What a welcome change from the room temperatures of Southern California. Greens and grays predominate. Any bit of color in this green-gray world stands out like, like anything that stands out from the rest.

Well, it was about time you reclaimed your memorable phrase, "room temperature," Peter. I've been riding it to death. Had it been copyrighted, I'd be in jail by now.

Great day here, with everything sprouting and budding, and the sun and warmth. It's either the best day ever, or tied for the best day ever, or, as Lisa from Chicago suggested, the second best day ever, which puts tongue in cheek to it.

Wow, it's 3:17pm and my weather gadget says it's 30 in La Pine! This is April, right?

Oh, and a whopping 36 in Bend!

Don't mention it P.

YELLOW TULIPS

Looking into the vase, into the calyx, into the water drop,
Looking into the throat of the flower, at the pollen stain,
I can see the ambush love sprung once in the summery wood.
I can see the casualties where they lay, till they set forth again.

I can see the lips, parted first in surprise, parted in desire,
Smile now as the silence falls on the yellow-dappled ride
For each thinks the other can hear each receding thought
On each receding tide.
They have come out of the wood now. They are skirting the fields
Between the tall wheat and the hedge, on the unploughed strips,
And they believe anyone who saw them would know
Every secret of their limbs and of their lips.

As if, like creatures of legend, they had come down out of the mist
Back to their native city, and stood in the square.
And they were seen to be marked at the throat with a certain sign
Whose meaning all could share.

* * * * * *

These flowers came from a shop. Really they looked nothing much
Till they opened as if in surprise at the heat of this hotel.
Then the surprise turned to a shout, and the girl said, "Shall I
chuck them now
Or give them one more day? They've not lasted so well."

"Oh give them one more day. They've lasted well enough.
They've lasted as love lasts, which is longer than most maintain.
Look at the sign it has left here at the throat of the flower
And on your tablecloth - look at the pollen stain."

James Fenton

>115 copyedit52: Ah, Peter, that really captures it.

Stickinclosetotheground
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7A1bHsrUDOc

Good morning, Peter. A poem by a Detroit guy:

M. Degas Teaches Art & Science at Durfee Intermediate School--Detroit, 1942

He made a line on the blackboard,
one bold stroke from right to left
diagonally downward and stood back
to ask, looking as always at no one
in particular, "What have I done?"
From the back of the room Freddie
shouted, "You've broken a piece
of chalk." M. Degas did not smile.
"What have I done?" he repeated.
The most intellectual students
looked down to study their desks
except for Gertrude Bimmler, who raised
her hand before she spoke. "M. Degas,
you have created the hypotenuse
of an isosceles triangle." Degas mused.
Everyone knew that Gertrude could not
be incorrect. "It is possible,"
Louis Warshowsky added precisely,
"that you have begun to represent
the roof of a barn." I remember
that it was exactly twenty minutes
past eleven, and I thought at worst
this would go on another forty
minutes. It was early April,
the snow had all but melted on
the playgrounds, the elms and maples
bordering the cracked walks shivered
in the new winds, and I believed
that before I knew it I'd be
swaggering to the candy store
for a Milky Way. M. Degas
pursed his lips, and the room
stilled until the long hand
of the clock moved to twenty one
as though in complicity with Gertrude,
who added confidently, "You've begun
to separate the dark from the dark."
I looked back for help, but now
the trees bucked and quaked, and I
knew this could go on forever.

Philip Levine

AMAZING NEWS:

A couple of months ago I received an e-mail from a woman in Rome, Catarina, asking about my book, I Think, Therefore Who Am I? from a new publishing house, she said, wondering if Mr. Weissman (they didn't seem to know I was the author) could authorize a translation, if it turned out they were interested in publishing it. I thought it was a scam to extract money from me, like one of those e-mails people get from Nigeria.

I mean, no U.S.company has ever wanted to publish any book I have ever written. And now someone might want to publish me in Italian, a language I do not even speak? It was bizarre.

But as you all know, I am not a shy person, so I e-mailed back saying the book and the rights to it were mine, and in subsequent weeks I sent them a copy and then more or less forgot about it.

This morning I received an e-mail from Rome: this new company wants my book, will send me a $1,000 advance, and listed the royalty payments for sales up to 10,000 copies, if I accept, with a scheduled pub date of December 2011.

Unbelievable.

Very good news on this raw Spring morning. Discerning Italians no doubt. You should celebrate at a fine Italian eatery.

I already made the reservation. And this afternoon I will begin to study Italian. Meanwhile, you may call me Pietro.

>125 copyedit52: Wonderful news. It is clearly a case of having no honor in your own country. I hope that your fine book sweeps Europe.

125 - Wonderful!

1000 congratulations Peter.

Peter, how wonderful! Excellent, excellent!

Grazie! Grazie! I announced it over on the Hobnobbing with Authors thread too, where someone informed me that I Think, Therefore Who Am I? will, in italiano, be: I Penso, dunque chi sono io?

I'd like to know what it is in Latin given that it's a riff on "cogito ergo sum". I keep thinking "cogito ergo cui bono?" because I know those two phrases and they would sound cute together.

Caro Pietro, congratulazioni! Italiano e una lingua bella. Gli Italiani sono gente intelligente.

The "e" should have an accent mark, but I don't remember how to do it without having the keyboard loaded. Also, It will either be "Io penso" or just "Penso". Or, the Italians might come up with some totally different translation for you. :-)

Bella giornata qui, oggi.

Ciao

Seriously, I might have to learn Italian. I mean, they could translate any way they want, print an entirely different book, for all I know. Fuinny, though, to think of all those bedraggled hippies--my characters--wandering around the lower east side of Manhattan, taking drugs, saying "Buongiorno" to each other.

Dohz a ippie zo gew-t dayz a gew-t faw knot-ing.

Look out Italo and Umberto, here comes Pietro!

I have an appointment with Spring. She comes to the window to wake me, and I go forth an hour or two earlier than usual. Though as yet the trill of the chip-bird is not heard - added - like the sparkling bead which bursts on bottled cider or ale. When we wake indeed, with a double awakening - not only from our ordinary nocturnal slumbers, but from our diurnal - we burst through the thallus of our ordinary life with a proper exciple , we wake with emphasis------------Henry David Thoreau

Thallus - The plant body characteristic of the Thallophyta, showing no differentiation into distinct members, or composed of members resembling, but not homologous with, those of higher plants. It may be simple or branched and varies widely in form.
A phylum of plants of very diverse habit and structure, including the algae, fungi, and lichens.

Exciple - The outer part of the fructification of most lichens.

My friend has returned and I cannot resist posting the two decent pictures I was able to grab.



Just leaving the stock pond to the east of the house and



almost 90° from the last - almost due south of my front porch.

Molto Buono, Pietro!!!! I just logged in after being absorbed by my Viking self and look what I find!

Cosa meravigliosa per voi! Fare la compagnia aerea e prenotazioni alberghiere! Lei sta per l'Italia!

Is that your Great Blue Heron, Pablo? Aren't they amazing when they come swooping through? We have a couple that do that here. Truly amazing birds.

The thermometer does not lie! Ugh!

Seems everyone on this thread speaks Italian but me. Nice crane--I mean heron--Paul. And nice thermometer, Tani. I gotta get me one of those.

Just make sure, Pietro that you get one that doesn't go below 75! ;-) At this point, maybe room temps aren't so bad?

Re: Italiano... (there are translators on the internet... shhhh don't tell anyone)

Congratulations, Peter. I hope they make a movie of it, too, in Italian of course. After all, it was the Italians that made Clint Eastwood famous. Yes, I know there was "Rawhide", but who of you all know who Rowdy Yates was? Good luck with the translation. I'll bet you and the translator will spend a lot of time together. You'll know more about translation, when this is over, than you ever thought existed.

Heademupmoveemout.

Get along little doegies it's comin out of your hide
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ShOiHPrwtHk
Frankie Lane
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=16V5GRM3jKU&feature=related

I think I might need to take a deductible business trip to Rome sometime next year to make sure they get the translation right. Rent a car at Orly or Charles DeGaulle, after flying to Paris, drive it down to the Loire Valley ... Tours, Saumur, Chinon (Rabelais's town), the Dordogne, Sarlat (where Montaigne was lord of the manor--somewhat like you, Gene), Province (best tomatoes in the world, Jane) ... Arles (I do love Arles), St. Remy (a lovely town, though Van Gogh spent time in the asylum up the road), and on to Marseille for couscous, and then Nice, Villefranche, snooty Portofino (in Italy now), Cinque Terre, Pisa, Firenze (Dante's tomb, Michelangelo's David, the Uffizi Gallery), Siena, Perugia ...

"You have to do all that traveling, Pietro?"

"Yes, it's a lot, I know. But there's no way around it. A writer has to make certain sacrifices."

A little warm-up
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Tvj68XuwUs

According to my dog-eared Mondadori's paperback dictionary, Peter (and isn't it fortunate that we can now distinguish between you and Pietro?), Umberto in the above offering is discussing ugliness.

Note to self: bruttezza = ugliness

Ate too much at dinner last night and woke up feeling foolish over the hoopla yesterday's excitement brought on. A gray day, a bit chilly, seems the proper antidote. I'll bring my garbage to the dump, do some editing, put Pietro aside.

Over the years, the guys I've considered my best friends have more often than not been Italian. Here's one of them, a fragment from the book I might write after the one that's after this other one I've just finished:

"Joseph Andrews," Nick Zargossa said to me.

I shook my head.

"Henry Fielding," he explained.

"I don't know it."

"An innocent blunders through sexual escapades ... it's a farce, written in the eighteenth century."

"I hardly read anymore," I confessed.

"We're afraid of orgasm," he said solemnly, leaning over the rutted wooden table and peering into his beer glass as if he were Ernest Hemingway and we were discussing bulls.

Mark, who'd introduced us, was jumpy, scanning the barroom, glancing nervously out the window at the nighttime street. Indeed it was remarkable how little he'd changed in ten years. And with that thought, it occurred to me that he and I still didn't have a hell of a lot in common; nor did he and Nick. But Mark had always been a good matchmaker, and just as he'd created support opinion groups and networks to make his life somewhat bearable, he'd intuited something about Nick and myself that could be the glue of friendship.

"So who do you read?" I asked Nick, half curious, half challenging; for what was the purpose of reading in this new day and age?

"Bukowski, Bowles, Burroughs ... "

I said, "I like Caine, O'Hara ... "

"Appointment in Samarra?"

"Yes, especially."

"Updike?" he asked.

"Not since Rabbit Run."

"And what're you reading now?"

"To tell you the truth, I haven't picked up a book in weeks."

Nick said, "Just because you write is no reason not to read."

139, 141, ahh, fond memories of Big-Bluey (A. herodias).

I know they mooch bait out of buckets on southern fishing docks. But up North, they are so skittish that the market gunners used to carve confidence decoys of 'em.

When I was about 11, I tramped near a marsh and flushed one at my feet. I almost had a heart attack then and there...

It's not cold here. All the spring ephemerals are up in southern New England: Hepatica, Bloodroot, Trillium - or Wake Robin - or my favorite - Stinking Benjamin, the alien Coltsfoot, Dutchman's Breeches...

Hey there Pietro Bembo, wasamattafawyou.

You must love the crust of the Earth on which you dwell more than the sweet crust of any bread or cake. You must be able to extract nutriment out of a sand-heap. You must have so good an appetite as this, else you will live in vain.
Henry David Thoreau

> 150 I do believe having a bird that size flush at my feet would near give me a heart attack right now.

Trees
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tgqYWQKBnw&feature=related
What else can you do but
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lteb--nvuyo&feature=related

Apropos that Creamy offering: I once spent hours working on a poem about trees in my tenement pad back in the day (from which there were no tress in sight). I probably was on something; I usually was. Eventually, dozens of pages got boiled down to five lines: something on the order of what kind of tree I would be if indeed I were a tree.

Ah, Pietro!!! Nessun bisogno di sentirsi imbecillità! Siamo lieti per voi!

BTW, Pietro... you just got back to NYC and Kathy was spanking you before I fell asleep. (sorry, I have been so neglectful of my reading lately what with my seeking dead people and all)

Early spring is arriving on the high desert today with wispy cirrus clouds and temps expected to hit 50ish. I am a happy girl!

Just because they call me Pietro, Tani, doesn't mean I actually understand Italian. And yes, she spanked me pretty good.

Dead people? Say what?

And I'm glad to hear that spring has finally sprung there, since next week at this time I will be in Seattle.

Anybody ever read Spanking the Maid?

;-) Nessun bisogno di sentirsi imbecillità! Siamo lieti per voi! = No need to feel foolish! We are happy for you!

I don't understand it either, Pietro ;-)

dead people = genealogy

Enjoy your time in the PNW! Not sure what Seattle has in store for you next week, but spring is in the valleys already. We are just slower up in the higher elevations.

Ciao, Bella!

Ewww! Spanking the Maid indeed, 'Rique!

You funny, Freeque Man!

Papa is watching the intro to the Masters and Darius Rucker is singing "Georgia on my Mind" What better way to enjoy an April Saturday.

How's Tiger doing, Tani? And...agreed.

He is -4 as of yesterday. leader is -6 according to Papa. they are just starting the 3rd round as we speak.

Check that... Tiger is at -7.

>160 highdesertlady:. Truly, Tani, you should come with a manual; some kind of instruction booklet. Okay, I get the dead people reference. Now, how is it that you can rattle off Italian so adroitly? Or are you just making it up?

LMAO! Check the link, Pietro....

Oh, I see. Maybe I can get a computer chip implanted in my head, tuned to that website. For my tour of Italian bookstores, of course.

And now ... I almost hate to ask, but: without using any capital letters, acronyms, emoticons, or any other references requiring translation, please tell me what LMAO means.

Masters standings:

Lee Westwood -10
Ian Poulter -8
Tiger -7
Phil Mickelson -7

But Papa paused the TV for about 15 minutes so these are probably going to change. Tiger just hit a bad one and came off with a "Sucks! God Damn it!" and they left in.

Laughing My Ass Off!

I have always been a bit complicated, but no one has ever said they needed an instruction booklet or manual... Papa and Mama thought I was nuts, cracking up as I did when I read your post.

You truly are a firecracker, Tani, and INK.

Okay, Pietro... now you got me... INK? (I now know?)

Now I'm the one LMAO.

INK = I'm not kidding

LMAO! They (the parentals) really are going to lock me up if I keep exploding with laughter around here!

I just finished the initial tilling of my first garden bed in thirty years. I'm so excited, but worn out, too. It averages about fifteen feet wide and fifty feet long. My plan is four short (20') rows of corn, maybe four pole bean tepees, several rows of okra, with a row of tomatoes at the south end. Corn is such a prime space waster, though.

I may not be able to use all of what I've tilled. The sun doesn't strike the northern third until about two pm, not really enough time for any of those crops. I may have to cut out the corn and maybe plant some summer leaf crop that can tolerate some shade. However, in a month or so as the sun climbs toward its zenith this may not be a problem. I guess I'll just wait and see.

As with so much around here, stuff was just stuck in the ground where the person happened to be standing at the time, without scheme or rhyme. I have a Dogwood right in the middle of the sunny end of the garden. If I was to extend the garden to the south, I'd have to go around this tree or remove it. I have an azalea about 6' tall and 10' in diameter right in the middle of what should be a grassy yard. Now I've got to figure out how to incorporate it into a larger set of beds and cetera. It may come out when I have twenty or so trees that clutter the yard removed. Don't worry, the trees I'm talking about are trash trees, tall pines, straight as an arrow going up about a hundred feet, maybe. I have a history with pines from eastern North Carolina as a kid. They spend the entire year throwing stuff at the ground. It's all stuff that has to be removed. With a rake. If the last tree on earth was a pine and I had a saw, well, let me tell you, an hour after I saw that sucker, there would be no trees left on earth. The tall, stately pine is the figment of some city dwellers imagination. They haven't lived with one up close and personal. The other tree that I have a surfeit of is the Southern Sweet Gum. It throws its damn monkey balls everywhere, usually after the leaves have been raked. It sheds terribly dropping branches and twigs all over the place. There are just too many of them and they are in awkward spots.

Oh, the trials of the Country Gentleman.

And you can't use pine for firewood either. Too sappy.

These pines are good for heart of pine stuff, but that's all. I used to live in a house in downtown Atlanta, Candler Park, that had heart of pine floors. We never worried about fire. We figured we would be toast, literally, by the time we even knew the place was ablaze.

You would never make where I live, Gene... We live in the middle of the Deschutes National Forest and Ponderosa Pine Heaven. Although the needles are a pain in the butt to rake 20' away from the house for fire safety, I really like the way they cover the ground. I love the natural forest landscape we live in. It feels like camping 24/7 365.

We don't do much more than bunch grass around here (except the flat-landers, that move up from the valley, who think it's a must) I admit I will probably put in a small patch in the front yard for the dogs, though.

Some people hate them, But I absolutely LOVE Juniper trees. Too me, there is nothing sweeter than the smell of Juniper and Sage on the high desert.

I am so disappointed that I finally have dirt to play in and we have such a short growing season that I won't be able to grow any food. Your garden, Gene, reminds me of the one I had 20 years ago. I really miss that. BUT, I will never move back to the Valley.

You do a better job of Masters reportage than those CBS commentators, Tani.

Thanks, 'Rique... got a little carried away, but 'tis one of the few sports I will watch with Papa.

Going back to seeking dead people... Ciao!

New thread! For all sports lovers:

http://www.librarything.com/topic/88962

If you like golf, you'll find it there. Lacrosse, German batball, beach volleyball, the World Cup, the Tour de France, NBA and NHL playoffs and champeenships, curling, rat basketball, the memories of old codgers and the posturings of young ones ... even golf, for godsakes!

Tani: you didn't have to delete all those scores. What we needed was a proper venue. And now we have it.

I know, Pietro... But it was a little over the top! I just moved the final standings over to the new thread.

Tani?! Le Salon EXISTS for "over the top".

Sheesh! I haven't seen so many deleted messages since we were The Quest for the Last Page of Ulysses and Jen and Judith deleted ALL of their posts.

lmao! k, got it! tc will remain over the top!

Funny, tho, I deleted them before Pietro started the new thread. It just looked ridiculous on a "Nature" thread.

Out of touch as usual.

From Delia (1592)

1.
If so it hap, this of-spring of my care,
These fatall Antheames, lamentable Songs:
Come to their view, who like afflicted are;
Let them sigh for their owne; and mone my wrongs.
But untoucht hearts, with unaffected eie,
Approach not to behold my heavinesse:
Clear-sighted you, soon note what is awrie,
Whilst blinded soules mine errours never gesse.
You blinded soules whom youth and errour leade,
You out-cast Eaglets, dazzled with your sunne:
Do you, and none but you my sorrowes reade,
You best can judge the wrongs that she hath done.
That she hath done, the motive of my paine;
Who whilst I love, doth kill me with disdaine.

Samuel Daniel 1562-1619
born two years before WS and outlived him by three.

I forgot to tell my friend Ganeshaka what the Kingston authorities did to Sawkill Creek, which runs past his boyhood home, a house his sister (who lives in Kingston now) told him had been painted an atrocious green by the current resident (too pale a green, I wrote him, to be considered "atrocious") ... a creek a mile from my house, and which I bicycle alongside when I ride up to the town of Woodstock, usually on Saturday.

Down where it rushes toward a waterfall, the creek occasionally overflowed after heavy rain, so the authorities--who have apparently not yet heard about ecology--consigned a derrick with a scoop, a few years ago, to haphazardly remove portions of the creek bed so the water would flow more smoothly, and thus not top its banks and puddle on the twisting road. Never occurred to them this might affect the plant life and the fish who feed in the creek, the water temperature where they lay eggs, and so on. To them it was merely a drainage ditch.

I think about that when I drive south alongside the Sawkill as it heads toward the Hudson, past the pale green house, and the wrecking crew that so casually altered an entire universe.

2.
These plaintive Verse, the Postes of my desire,
Which haste for succor to her slow regard,
Beare not report of any slender fire,
Forging a grief to winne a fames reward.
Nor are my passions limnd for outward hew,
For that no colours can depaint my sorrowes:
DELIA her selfe, and all the world may view
Best in my face, where cares hath tild deepe forrowes.
No bayes I seek to decke my mourning brow,
O cleer-eyed Rector of the holy Hill:
My humble accents beare the Olive bough,
Of intercession but to move her will.
These lines I use, t'unburthen mine own hart;
My love affects no fame, nor steemes of art.

from DELIA 1592
Samuel Daniel

But, Delia's Gone.

The Kingston Trio!!! Holy crap, Gene, you are old!

But the best music is from when you fellows were young! Here is one a little bit nature oriented from The Kingston Trio:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8FBFcIGpphg&feature=related

And the slide show of them is great!

It is a sonnet sequence after after all
3.
Faire is my Love, and cruell as she's faire;
Her brow-shades frownes, although her eyes are sunny;
Her smiles are lightning, though her pride despaire;
And her disdaines are Gall: her favours Hunny.
A modest Maide, deckt with a blush of honour,
Whose feet doe tread greene paths of youth and love,
The wonder of all eyes that looke upon her:
Sacred on earth, design'd a Saint above.
Chastitie and Beautie, which were deadly foes,
Live reconciled friends within her brow:
And had she pity to conjoyne with those,
Then who had heard the plaints I utter now.
Oh had she not been faire, and thus unkind,
My Muse had slept, and none had knowne my mind.

Samuel Daniel

60 degrees, near perfect day here in the Motor City. Almost no breeze to speak of. Very few clouds marr the welkin. (Marr in honour of Dave Marr, on the day of the Masters). The dogwoods are splendid in their colors.
DOGWOODS
There are 17 American species of Dogwood, ranging from the tiny northern Branchbury to the Pacific Dogwood, which grows 80 ft high and more. Other species are shrubby or are small trees. Oppositely placed, simple leaves with curved, almost parallel veins are field marks for the Dogwood group. The slow-growing Flowering Dogwood is best known, both in its wild and cultivated forms; the latter include pink-flowered varieties. The "flower" is a group of enlarged bracts around a cluster of small true flowers. The red fruits are as attractive as the flowers, and serve as food for wildlife as well. The dense, compact, fine-grained wood of Flowering Dogwood is unequaled for the making of shuttles for weaving.

Sounds like the white and pinkish blooms I see all over now, lining some roads in profusion. They come on the heels of the forsythias--actually overlap--which are beginning to turn from yellow to green already. I'm such an ignoramus when it comes to flowers. I prob'ly should buy a book.

199 - They are my favorite. My sister has been sending me pictures of the dogwoods from back home. I uploaded to my profile here but can't figure out how to grab it to post in talk. Anybody got any info on that?

Jane: This is post #98 from the previous thread: Enrique's instructions to Tani, which Gene then used as well, and that worked for both of them. On the same thread, post #91, Mr. Durick aka Robert also has link concerning uploading pix:

Step One: right click on whatever photo you want and save it in whatever file you've got handy

Step Two: open a free account with photobucket: http://photobucket.com/ (there's others; but I like photobucket best)

Step Three: Upload your copied picture into your photobucket account (nearly the exact same process as uploading your logo into LT on your profile page)

Step Four: With your uploaded pic before you, click on edit pictures or photos (I forget the exact language) and you'll see 4 lines of urls and whatnot appear; copy the second line (right click copy)

Step Five: open a post (preferably in Le Salon Litteraire) and paste your picture.

Step Six: You'll now need to write some brief "code" on each side of the url you've just copied.

For this example, a "less than" symbol will = { and a "greater than" symbol will = } Were I to use the less than/greater symbols, it would actually create a link to nowhere.

Okay, so you've got what you pasted in your post and just need to slap down some code on each side; here it is:

{img src="your copied url of your picture"} and that's it! Do note there IS a space between img and src.

Btw, you can't post pics in comments; won't work; but you can post pics on your profile page,

Yes Dogwoods are a delight. As are the Sonnets in Daniels sequence:

4.
If this be love, to draw a weary breath,
Paint on floods, till the shore crie to th'aire:
With downward lookes, still reading on the earth;
These sad memorials of my loves despaire:
If this be love, to warre against my soule,
Lie down to waile, rise up to sigh and grieve:
The never-resting stone of care to roll,
Still to complaine my griefes, whilst none relieve.
If this be love to cloathe me with dark thoughts,
Haunting untrodden paths to waile apart;
My pleasures horror, Musicke tragicke notes,
Teares in mine eyes, and sorrow at my hart.
If this be love, to live a living death,
Then doe I love and draw this wearie breath.

S.D.

D'ja catch the HBO show Treme, Jane? Would've been your cup of tea, I think.

No, but I checked it out on the Googles and see that I would probably like it. As I love anything that smacks of Jack Teagarden or Fats Waller. Is Goodman's redheaded wife, or whatever the relation, the woman from STATION AGENT? She was good in that one. Have you seen BARTON FINK? Goodman was spooky in that movie. The hollywood spoofing was deadly. I hope your not weary of the Sonnet sequence. I am about as far removed from the poet's voice as you can get, I love that sort of thing anyhow. As I relish all the wailing and negativity in Shake-speare's Sonnets. Funny, I am from day to day and year to year a very happy fellow.
I don't mean to suggest you've read the Sonnets thus far and might be wearying of them, do I? An interesting sentence, that.

No, the redhead--whose name I don't immediately recall--was a cop on the TV show Homicide, and was the protagonist in a gritty little film the year before last about a woman and her teenage son living upstate near Lake Erie, hard by an Indian reservation, surviving through low-level smuggling during the frigid winter. She was nominated for an Oscar, lives just up the road in Accord (where a lot of flying saucers are seen on summer nights). Around here she was of course the local favorite for the Oscar.

Goodman, with his massive bulk and style, is always fun to watch, I think, though in Barton Fink, terrifying--his bulk vs. Turturro's ineffectuality. And yes, absolutely, one of the creepier movies I've ever seen.

I'm with you on Fats--a massive man himself, but light on his feets.

You just keep doing what you're doing, Peter, with the sonnets and other things. Y'know, half the things I enter, a half hour later I have to restrain myself from going back and deleting. I have the perfection virus: an obsession to say everything perfectly, always do the right thing, etc. I confront myself over this compulsiveness by citing my own version of the Golden Rule: "Do unto yourself what you would have yourself do unto others."

The redhead's name is Melissa Leo, and she was nominated for an Oscar for Frozen River. (I Googled it.) The writer and director of that film, Courtney Hunt, also lives upstate, not far from here, in Chatham, a couple counties away (Columbia). I know Chatham well because I used to take my daughter to a Quaker meeting house there, where teenagers spent weekends discussing serious teenage things.

Housean news; Greg House, that is. Hugh Laurie directed tonight's episode (though maybe ChocolateMuse has already seen it in Australia, given the time zone difference). In an article in today's New York Times, the show is called "the No. 1 drama in Italy." I perked up, reading that. It appears that overnight I've become Italocentric.

204 - Blast! No, I missed it. I forgot that was last night. I'll have to try to catch it in reruns.

5.
I once may see when years shall wreck my wrong,
When golden hairs shall change to silver wire:
And those bright rays, that kindle all this fire,
Shall fail in force, their working not so strong.
Then beauty (now the burthen of my song)
Whose glorious blaze the world doth so admire,
Must yield up all to tyrant times desire;
Then fade those flowers which deckt her pride so long.
When, if she grieve to gaze her in her glass,
Which then presents her winter-withered hew,
Go you my verse, go tell her what she was;
For what she was, she best shall find in you.
Your firey heat lets not her glory pass,
But (Phoenix-like) shall make her live anew.

remember this is 1592 or thereabouts.
Samuel Daniel

>209 Porius:. You tryin' to make us feel old, Peter?

>208 janemarieprice:. I've been waiting awhile for something watchable on HBO Sunday nights, and Treme came through. Some notable actors, lotta catchy music, a compelling story and backstory, and more than a little indignation about Katrina, which is good, I think, given the usual soporific politics offered on TV dramas.

Nosir. Though we are oldish.

Saw a great movie in the wee hours of the morning: TOUS LES MATINS DU MONDE, with Depardu and an exquisitely lovely actress, Ann Brochet. The small cast was quite good. The movie was a dart to the heart, as Bruce Cockburn would put it.

It's true, I think, that you're only as old as you feel. And now, with my Italianate rebirth, I feel positively sprightly.

More on Treme (and coincidentally, on age): before I saw the elegant funeral march scene near the end, I always wanted to have an Irish wake, with songs and storytelling. But now I want to go like they apparently do in N'Awlins, if I could be alive to do the two-step in the procession, of course.

Can't have your cake and eat it.

5.
Care-charmer sleep, son of the table night,
Brother to death, in silent darkness born:
Relieve my languish, and restore the light,
With dark forgetting of my cares return.
And let the day be time enough to mourn,
The shipwreck of my ill adventured youth:
Let waking eyes suffice to wail their scorn,
Without the torment of the nights untruth.
Cease dreams, th'Images of days desires,
To model forth the passions of the morrow:
Never let rising Sunne approve you liers,
To add more grief to aggravate my sorrow.
Still let me sleep, imbracing clouds in vain;
And never to wake to feel the days disdain.

S.D.

True, but the underpinning of my particular brand of irony is to pretend you can.

What else is it what we do but pretend?

Oh my gosh, Peter: you can't be that cynical. I don't believe it. We pretend a lot, sure, and some more than others, and maybe even some most or all of the time. And perhaps there's even more of it in this virtual setting, where people can so easily reimagine themselves. But there is a "what else" that isn't pretense. Your dedication to the boys you coach, for instance.

210, 212 - Good. I've been a bit disappointed in HBO's offerings of late, to the point where we considered cancelling it. And the jazz funeral is absolutely the way to go!

We can be sincere in our pretense, can we not. I don't mean pretend in the way S. Palin pretends to be a politician or a statesman(woman), I mean it in the way it comes to us in that Yeats poem: the best lack all conviction and the worst are full of passionate intensity. In the way Palin, Fuckabee, Gingrich, and all those old poseurs are.

I made some leek soup just now. The type old Hercule Poireaux would love to dip his dainty spoon into.

>218 Porius:. Soup! (Or zuppa.) Now we're talkin' about something that's definitely real.

>217 janemarieprice:. Jazz funeral, huh? You've just disillusioned me, Jane. I assumed that's the way all of ya down there went out. Oh well. I'll just have to specify that in my final arrangements.

219 - It's very common, and you don't need to be a musician to have one though you may need to be Catholic. (I'm assuming that's what the funeral procession in the show was.)

I should've known. About half an hour ago I remembered I edited a book called Jazz Funeral, by Julie Smith, who writes lightweight mysteries centered in New Orleans. I guess the book didn't make much of an impression on me.

None other fame mine unambitious Muse,
Affected ever but t'eternize thee:
All other honours do my hopes refuse,
Which meaner priz'd and momentary be.
For God forbid I should my papers blot,
With mercenary lines, with servile Pen:
Praising virtues in them that have them not,
Basely attending on the hopes of men.
No, no, my Verse respects nor Thames nor Theatres,
Nor seeks it to be known unto the Great:
But Avon poor in fame, and poor in waters,
Shall have my Song, where Delia hath her seat.
Avon shall be my Thames, and she my Song,
No other prouder Brooks shall hear my wrong.
8.

Samuel Daniel

Say what abridgment have you for this evening! What masque? What musick? How shall we beguile the lazy time, if not with some delight?

Though you don't name them, I see in your review of my book, Tani, that you were much taken by Beelzebub and his sidekick: the stuff of nightmares. Yes, it would have been better if you, or any other similarly affected reader, had been there to yell, "No, Peter! Don't do that!" Or, "Don't go there!" Or, "Don't say that, you jerk!" But look at it this way: the fact that you weren't let the story go where it did. That is, in retrospect, as a result of making those mistakes, I had a story to tell.

Boy and how! I wanted to grab you and shake you! And those dastardly bastards gave me nightmares last night!

I am looking forward to your next book but I have to ask you something... related to the publishing and editing aspect. I will have to preface this by stating that I am an anal retentive freak when it comes to spelling errors and erroneous words or words out of place or context in the books I read.

How many times does a book get edited or proof read, etc. before being published. I am not just speaking about your book in particular, though there were a few in I Think, Therefore, Who Am I?, I find them a lot more these days. Is this because proofreaders or editors rely on spell check/grammar check rather than actually reading them? What is the process? Man, If I had a dime for every mistake I catch in books these days...

In fact, we discussed this subject on Anna's thread the other day:

http://www.librarything.com/topic/83227

From message #85 on we get into it a bit, and I gave a lengthy answer on proofreading and copyediting and how things work in publishing houses and on publications.

Lotta TV references on the thread recently, mostly by me. Here's some more:

To Television

Not a "window on the world"
But as we call you,
A box a tube

Terrarium of dreams and wonders.
Coffer of shades, ordained
Cotillion of phosphors
Or liquid crystal

Homey miracle, tub
Of acquiescence, vein of defiance.
Your patron in the pantheon would be Hermes

Raster dance,
Quick one, little thief, escort
Of the dying and comfort of the sick,

In a blue glow my father and little sister sat
Snuggled in one chair watching you
Their wife and mother was sick in the head
I scorned you and them as I scorned so much

Now I like you best in a hotel room,
Maybe minutes
Before I have to face an audience: behind
The doors of the armoire, box
Within a box--Tom & Jerry, or also brilliant
And reassuring, Oprah Winfrey.

Thank you, for I watched, I watched
Sid Caesar speaking French and Japanese not
Through knowledge but imagination,
His quickness, and Thank You, I watched live
Jackie Robinson stealing

Home, the image--O strung shell--enduring
Fleeter than light like these words we
Remember in, they too winged
At the helmet and ankles.

Robert Pinsky

Plastic Fantastic Lover.

Robert Pinsky is a very fine poet. An unfailing eye for what sustains.

#197

Aw Lisa, every time I see the Kingston Trio I can't stop thinking about this PBS-esque comedy:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W0hyExZ9Dfo&feature=related

'Much better than "Dog Show" and almost as good as "This is Spinal Tap".

DAPHNE
Ovid alone tells of Daphne. A Roman story, or a Roman's story. A Greek poet would never have thought of elegant dress and just the right hairdo for a wood nymph.

Daphne was another of those huntresses who hated the domestick life. She was also the first to catch the Far Darters' eye. Of course she fled instantly. It was not healthy to get hooked up with the gods. Exile was the best result. Ocean nymphs who paid a visit to Prometheus on his Caucasus crag knew of what escaped their teeth's barrier when they said to him:

May you never, oh, never behold me
Sharing the couch of a god.
May none of the dweller in heaven
Draw near to me ever.
Such love as the high gods know,
From whose eyes none can hide,
May that never be mine.
To war with a god-lover is not was,
It is despair.

Daphne would agree. She wanted no mortal lovers either. Peneus her father was displeased because she ran from all handsome suitors. He complained of the dearth of grandsons. But she would only cry and cry and plead that she might follow in Diana's footsteps. He would yield. And off she'd go into the deep woods, following her bliss.
But at last Apollo saw her, and her bliss was interrupted. She was on a hunt. Her dress above her knees, her arms bare, her hair as wild as Dorothy Wordsworth's eyes. She was a sight for sore eyes. But not enough for Apollo, he longed to see her in the proper dress, the right coif. This made the fire burning in his heart burn brighter. He ran towards her. She darted off, she was as fast as Cool Papa Bell but Apollo was even more fleet of foot. It took a little effort but Apollo quickly gained on her. As he ran he sent Daphne little messages: "Stop and find out who I am, I am not a rude mechanicall, I am Delphi's Lord, and I love you."
But Daphne flew on. More frightened than before. If it was Apollo, she was sunk. Though she was determined to fight him to the bitter end. She felt his breath hot on her neck. But there in front of her the trees opened and she saw her father's river. She screamed: "Help me, father, help me!" At the words a dragging numbness came upon her, her feet seemed rooted in th earth she had moments ago sped over like Atalanta. Bark was enclosing her; leaves were sprouting forth. She had been changed into a tree, a Laurel.
Apollo watched with dismay and grief. "Oh fairest of Maidens you are lost to me," he mourned, "But at least you shall be my tree. With your leaves my heroes shall wreathe their brows. You shall have your part in all my triumphs. Apollo and his Laurel shall be joined together wherever songs are sung and stories are told."
The beautiful shining-leafed tree seemed to nod its waving head as if in happy consent.

Holy Toledo! Or maybe Holy Detroit! Porius, that most discerning literate man of the people, has just given my book five stars!

And a thumb for the latest review. I haven't reviewed for quite awhile but I may scribble something in the not too distant future.

What review is that? I usually pick up hitchhikers, if they're not toting guns.

Oh, I see. Tani's review made the big-time. Some guy fingering his mustache, staring out of the cover.

Pietro was envious of all our beautiful pics, so I am posting these for him:

1st one is The Monet house in Giverny, France (also copedit52's desktop photo)



Next is The Roman arena in Arles, France (which used to be copyedit52's desktop).



He also tells me they were taken on one of his many vacations in France.

Io, daughter of the River-god Inachus, was a priestess of Argive Hera.
Zeus, over whom Iynx, daughter of Pan and Acho, had cast a spell, fell in love with Io, and when Hera charged him with infidelity and turned Iynx into a wryneck (a woodpecker-like bird) as a punishment, lied: 'I have never touched Io."
He then turned her into a white cow, which Hera (ever generous) claimed as hers and handed over for safe keeping to Argus Panoptes, ordering him: 'Tether this beast secretly to an olive-tree at Nemea.' But Zeus sent Hermes to fetch her back, and himself led the way to Nemea - or, some say, to Mycenae - dressed in woodpecker disguise. Hermes, though the cleverest of thieves (even cleverer than Timmy Geitner), knew that he could not steal Io without being detected by one of Argus's 100 eyes; he therefore charmed him asleep by playing the flute, crushed him with a boulder, cut off his head, and released Io. Hera, having placed Argus's eyes in the tail of a peacock, as a constant reminder of his foul murder, set a gadfly to sting Io and chase her all over the world.

from THE GREEK MYTHS Vol. One - 56
Robert Graves

Thanks for posting them for me, Tani. Clearly, I know how to vacation, but not how to do other elementary stuff, to judge from the number of photo postings around here. The coliseum at Arles is smaller than the one at Nimes (just up the road), and that much smaller than the one in Rome. Makes a nice match, I think, for Porius's Zeus, Hera, and the rest of that crew.

My tulips survived! The daffodils are getting bigger and more have decided to show themselves today. Temps are supposed to reach mid sixties later this week and Spring has finally arrived on the High Desert!

Oh yeah, the snow tires came off today too! I don't know how your states work, but we are supposed to have them off by April 1st. They extended the date twice because of the cold snaps we just had.

We are cloudy today, but the sun keeps peaking about and 'tis enjoyable none the less. Cheers!

The more things change the more they stay the same:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9YCxDnkanoQ

Synchronicity, Pierre. (that's twice in a week or so)

Who's Pierre?

Sorry, Pietro... but when in France...

Good point, but it left me wondering about Piero, what that translated as. (I'm just noodling around today, prepping for my trip to Seattle.) So I looked it up, discovered that Piero is an accepted form of "Peter," and lo, while on that site, came upon this so-called "question of the day":

How was the name of Portland, Oregon, chosen?

The answer: A coin toss was used to decide the name. One of the city's founders was from Maine and the other was from Massachusetts. Boston was the losing name.

I hadn't known that.

Yup! I am glad we aren't Boston. We're also known as Stumptown.

Not Jakes-pierre?

b. Io first went to Dodona, and presently reached the sea called the Ionian after her, but there turned back and travelled north to Mt. Haemus and then, by way of the Danube's delta, coursed sun-wise around the Black Sea, crossing the Crimean Bosphorus, and following the River Hybristes to its source in the Caucasus, where Prometheus still languished on his rock. She regained Europe by way of Colchis, the land of the Chalybes, and the Thracian Bosphorus; then away she galloped through Asia Minor to Tarsus and Joppa, thence to Media, Bactria, and India and, passing s-w thru Arabia, across the Indian Bosphorus the Straits of Bab-el-Mandeb, reached Ethiopia. Thence she travelled down from the sources of the Nile, where the pygmies make perpetual war with the cranes, and found rest at last in Egypt. There Zeus restored her to human form and, having married Telegonus, she gave birth to Epaphus - her son by Zeus, who had touched her to some purpose - and founded the worship of Isis, as she called Demeter. Epahus, who was rumored to be the divine bull Apis, reigned over Egypt, and had a daughter, Libya, the mother by Poseidon of Agenor and Belus.*

*This myth consists of several strands. The Argives worshipped the moon as a cow, because the horned new moon was regarded as the source of all water, and therefore of cattle fodder. Her 3 colors: white for the new moon, black for the moon when it waned, red for the harvest moon, represented the 3 ages of the Moon-Goddess - Maiden, Nymph, and Crone. Io changed her color as the moon changes, but for 'red' the mythographer subs 'violet' because ion is Greek for the violet flower. Woodpeckers were thought to be knocking for rain when they tapped on oak-trunks; and Io was the Moon as rain bringer. The herdsmen needed rain most pressingly in late summer, when gadflys attacked their cattle and sent them frantic; in Africa, cattle owning Negro tribes still hurry from pasture to pasture when attacked by them. Io's Argive priestesses seemed to have performed an annual heifer-dance in which they pretended to be driven mad by gadflys, while wood-pecker men , tapping on oak doors and calling Io! Io!, invited the rain to fall and relieve their torments. This seems to be the origin of the myth of the Coan women who were turned into cows. Argive colonies founded in Euboea, the Bosphorus, the Black Sea, Syria, and Egypt, took their rain-making dance with them. The wryneck, the Moon-Goddess's prime orgiastic bird, nests in willows, and was therefore concerned with water-magic.

more from Grave's GREEK MYTHS

'Tis one of the 1st things I learned in 1st or 2nd grade oh so many eons ago. Our first capitol was called Champoeg on the Willamette River just south of Oregon City (a suburb of PDX) and is now a state park.

Champoeg

Champoeg State Park

One of my favorite places to party back in the day.

And they must have taught you about fur magnate Jacob Astor, but prob'ly didn't tell you his name is now attached to Astor Place in New York City, hard by the once-upon-a-time hippie neighborhood you just read about (and where I used to go to buy hand-rolled Cuban cigars for a dime each), and also Astoria, a neighborhood in Queens, once Greek, now somewhat Greek but more so twenty-something people fresh out of college and living three to an apartment. Always a safe neighborhood, Astoria.

We have Astoria thanks to JJ Astor. Our northwestern most city in Oregon.

Well, yes. And thanks to avarice too.

On second thought, Astor is long since dead, and judging from what I read in the paper, his inheritors are at each other's throats. Karmic punishment enough for the old man's crimes against nature.

To finish the story:

d. . . . . have quite a different story to tell. They say that Inachus, a son of Iapetus, ruled over Argos, and founded the city of Iopolis - for Io is the name by which the moon was once worshipped at Argos - and called his daughter Io in honor of the moon. Zeus Picus, King of the West, sent his servants to carry off Io, and outraged her as soon as she reached the palace. After bearing him a daughter named Libya, Io fled to Egypt, but found that Hermes, son of Zeus, was reigning there; so continued her flight to Mt. Silpium in Syria, where she died of grief and shame. Inachus then sent Io's brothers and kinfolk in search of her, warning them not to return empty-handed. With Triptolemus for their
guide, they knocked on every door in Syria, crying, 'May the spirit of Io find rest!'; until at last they they reached Mt. Silpium, where a phantasmal cow addressed them with: 'Here am I, Io' They decided that Io must have been buried on that spot, and therefore founded a second Iopolis, now called Antioch, In honor of Io, the Iopolitans knock at one another's doors in the same way every year, using the same cry; and the Argives mourn annually for her.

GREEK MYTHS, Robert Graves

Old Graves was always on the lookout.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qSfndZfKFNU&feature=related
The Elements in Harmony.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2IlHgbOWj4o

Not quite a frost out there, but it's still cool in the morning; enough so my breath comes out as vapor. Still, there's a lot of twittering, chirping, and a few squawks in the forest behind my house. When I get back from Seattle it might be time to put up the hummingbird feeder.

Which reminds me: Marian, what's happening out there in northern Ohio? Haven't heard from you in a while. What kind of birds are at your feeder? And are the fishermen hauling fish out of that great lake?

Some of us said some things about country fairs yesterday, on another thread, including me, with a boyish memory of Coney Island. Which segues me to this poem:

Country Fair

If you didn't see the six-legged dog,
It doesn't matter.
We did, and he mostly lay in the corner.
As for the extra legs,

One got used to them quickly
And thought of other things.
Like, what a cold, dark night
To be out at the fair.

Then the keeper threw a stick
And the dog went after it
On four legs, the other two flapping behind,
Which made one girl shriek with laughter.

She was drunk and so was the man
Who kept kissing her neck.
The dog got the stick and looked back at us.
And that was the whole show.

Charles Simic
for Hayden Carruth

57. PHORONEUS

The first man to found and people a market-town was Io's brother Phoroneus, son of the River-god Inachus and the nymph Melia; later its name, Phoronicum, was changed to Argos. P. was also the first to discover the use of fire, after Prometheus had stolen it. He married the nymph Cerdo, ruled the entire Peloponnese, and initiated the worship of Hera. When he died, his sons Pelasgus, Iasus, and Agenor divided the Peloponnese between them; but his son Car founded the city of Megara.
1. Phrononeus's name, which the Greeks read as 'bringer of a price'
in the sense that he invented markets, probably stands for Fearinus ('of the dawn of the year', i.e. the Spring) variants are Bran, Barn, Bergn, Vron, Ephron, Gwern, Fearn, and Brennus. As the spirit of the alder-tree which presided over the fourth month in the sacred Year, during which the Spring Fire Festival was celebrated, he was described as a son of Inachus , because alders grow by rivers. His mother is the ash-nymph Melia, because the ash , the preceding tree of the same series, is said to 'court the flash' - lightning struck trees were primitive man's first source of fire. Being an oracular hero, he was also associated with the crow. Phoroneus's discovery of the use of fire may be explained by the ancient smiths' and potters' preference for alder charcoal, which gives out more heat than any other. Cerdo ('gain' or 'art'_ is one of Demeter's titles, it was applied to her as weasel, or fox, both considered prophetic animals. Phoroneus seems to have been a title for Chronus, with whom the crow and the alder are also associated, and therefore the Titan of the 7th Day. The division of Phoroneus's kingdom between his sons Pelasgus, Iasus, and Agenor recalls that of Chronus's kingdom between Zeus, Posseidon, and Hades;
but perhaps describes a pre-Achaean partition of the Peloponnese.
2. Car is Q're, or Carius, or the Great God Ker, who seems to have derived the title from his moon-mother Artemis Caria, or Caryatis.

from THE GREEK MYTHS BY Robert Graves

ALDERS
are close relatives of the Birches, with similar flowers, fruits, and seeds. Their bark is marked with horizontal lenticels as in Birches. Alders, however, are mostly shrubs. Of about 9 species in this country, only 2 become good-sized trees: the Red and White Alder of the Pacific Coast. The short-stemmed, alternate leaves vary from species to species, but all are characterized by strong feather veins. Flowers are greenish or yellowish catkins. The fruits are small, woody cones. Alders are fast-growing and prefer moist soil along streams or in swamps.

http://aldersgatecycle.wordpress.com/2008/09/14/about-the-alder/
More Alders
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alder
More, but not necessarily merry-er.
http://www.motherearthreflections.com/what_is_your_tree_symbol
Alders and Robert Lee Frost
lpg=PA172&dq=alder+trees+in+connection+with+robert+frost&source=bl&ots=jRpoav64HX&sig=0pIa1CeDPpB-RBuzkqupVK2Q9YQ&hl=en&ei=OVjHS9vAMoPkNdCJ8eoI&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4&ved=0CBIQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q&f=false

Apparently, I am a Hazel tree (hazelnut tree?, filbert tree?) And it is true, I love hazelnuts.

The Hazel Tree ... 5 August - 1 September - It was thought magical skills and knowledge could be gained from eating Hazel nuts. Hazel people are artistic. They have lively, analytical minds and make inspiring teachers. Imaginative, they are radical and idealistic thinkers.
The Ruling Deity - The Sea God Manannan Mac Lir, a master of disguise, rules this sign.
The Druic Animal - To the Celts, the Salmon is the oldest and wisest animal, symbolising inspiration - Hazels need to express their creativity or they can become morbid and introspective
Planetary Ruler - Mercury
Ogham Word - Coll

This was interesting. I am a Holly tree:
The Holly Tree.. 8 July - 4 August - When Celtic Chieftains chose a successor, he was crowned with a Holly wreath. The ever-green Holly was thought to repel enemies, and warriors carried Holy wood cudgels. Holly people are practical, capable and steadfast in adversity, cautious, logical and efficient. They have good business sense but prefer to assist rather than lead. In relationships they are suportive, protective and possessive.
The Ruling Deity - The Smith God Govannon rules this sign
The Druic Animal - The Unicorn symbolises purity and strength - Hollies must be less perfectionistic or they may suffer loss of confidence and direction.
Planetary Ruler - Earth
Ogham Word - Tinne, crime punishable by death to fell one.

Well before I wrap this tree day. Hazel: C for Coll. The 9th tree is the hazel, in the nutting season. The nut in Celtic legend is always an emblem of concentrated wisdom: something sweet, compact and sustaining enclosed in a small hard shell - as we say: 'this is the matter in a nutshell.' The Rennes DINNSHENCHAS, an important early Irish topographical treatise, describes a beautiful fountain called Connla's Well, near Tipperary, over which hung the 9 hazels of poetic art which produced flowers and fruit (ie. beauty and wisdom) simultaneously. As the nuts dropped into the well they fed the salmon swimming in it, and whatever number of nuts any of them swallowed, so many bright spots appeared on its body. All the knowledge of the arts and sciences was bound up with the eating of these nuts, already noted in the story of Fionn, whose name Gwion adopted. In England a forked hazel-stick was used for divining not only hidden treasure and water, but people guilty of theft and murder-until the 17th C. though T C Lethbridge used the thing in the last century. Also used to make one invisible.
The rest of Hazel info in Robert Graves' WHITE GODDESS P. 188-9

T for Tinne, the 8th tree is the holly, which flowers in July. The giant in the Irish ROMANCE OF GAWAINE AND TE GREEN KNIGHT used a holly-bush for a club.The Holly is even more venerated than the Oak.
Read about it on p.185-6 in THE WHITE GODDESS

But back to the Alder:The Celtic meaning of the Alder deals with giving and nurturing among the sacred Ogham for many reasons.
Namely, its root system provides rich nutrients to the soil, more so than other trees. The alder can successfully restore poor soil conditions back to healthy pi levels.
Primarily a wetlands and swamp tree, the Alders root system is often submerged in watery areas. As such, the Celts observed their roots serving as intricate shelter systems to fish, specifically trout and salmon. Further the Alders leaves easily decompose in the water providing rich nutrients to all manner of water creatures.
Although primarily associated with the element of water, the Alder gracefully crosses into the realm of air and fire as well. For example, ancient legend indicates the wood of the young Alder is traditionally used for crafting whistles, Pan-flutes, and recorders.

I just knew there was more to my Celtic self!!!

Well, Anna, Tani, here I am, in your Pacific Northwest, early morning, though the clock is off by three hours: my gosh, how do you know when to get up and go to sleep?

Everybody in this city is very young. I found it charming for a while, but then it seemed downright silly. There is, of course, coffee everywhere. But the coffeehouses--everyone has their favorites--have that West Coast lack of interior decoration that we in cold weather climes find kind of ... spartan, even mundane. Sorry, folks, that's the way it is: the tradeoff for less severe weather is less interior ambience. And of course need I add that no one here knows how to drive? I mean, I shout at them when the light changes to green that it means go, now! (motherfrigger).

On a bookish note, I hadn't bought a travel book at an airport in a while. To my amazement, everyone I edit for a living was there! It's where they all live! Eric Von Lustbader and the others! So of course what could I possibly find to read? I mean, now that I wasn't getting paid to read such offerings. Turns out I found a guy whom I edited once years ago, a mystery writer, John Lutz, and picked up a serial killer potboiler called Chill of Night. Not bad, for what it is: a pass-the-time kinda book.

85 yesterday, 55 today. More like it. Keep the firewood handy. It looks like a fish soup kindanite donit? I can hear George Sanders on the tv in the den, all right by me.

258: Wait are you actually here in Portland? Or Seattle? Will you be here for any length of time?

Loons.
Loons will continue to come and nest at Quabbin every summer; that is their way. They will continue to bath and preen in Quabbin waters and dine on contaminated fish. I fear that the loons of Quabbin and of No. Ontario, and perhaps loons everywhere - like the mercury-afflicted Mad Hatter of ALICE'S ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND - are having their nervous systems literally eroded. The compound interferes with neurotransmitter release, thereby short-circuiting brain functions involving coordination and vision. The result, I believe, is that the loons' ability to catch fish deteriorates , along with their ability to rear two-chick broods.
At my study site in N.Y. State I have seen second-hatched "loonlings" die of starvation; it is pathetic to watch. The smaller chick moves farther and farther from the family group, is not fed, and finally disappears. One dead seven-week old bird weighed just 12 ounces; it should have weighed five pounds or more.

Judith McIntyre
NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC

http://www.fws.gov/northdakotafieldoffice/images/common%20loon.jpg
http://michcoy.files.wordpress.com/2009/10/commonloon1.jpg
http://www.crexmeadows.org/images/common%20loon2.JPG
What's worth doing is worth overdoing?
http://www.pbase.com/harpeggio/loons

261: How completely tragic.

A totally great book I read by chance because it had a Common Loon on its cover at the library: To Kill a Common Loon by Mitch Luckett. Highly recommended. The loon is a great mythological figure in Native American myths and has a wonderful call that will haunt you forever.

Look forward to looking into it.

260. Anna, I thought Seattle and Portland were the same. Isn't there a Seaport airport or somesuch?

261. Porius, I have The Creation of Quabbin Reservoir, but I have not yet got round to reading it. I am surprised to hear that there are loons there, but I was surprised to see ducks in the little swamp behind my parents house in Springfield when I went back to visit one time as a putative adult.

Robert

You should get around to reading it Rob.

I just have to finish.
Nowhere is there more loon enthusiasm than in Minnesota. Loon-calling contests, etc. etc. A mall that will take up an entire block in downtown Minneapolis will be christened Gaviidae Common, honoring the scientific name for the loon.
Ungainly and awkward on turf, loons are marvelously built for the water. With relatively small wings, they seem like feathered seals underwater, where they twist, turn, and pivot faster than most fish, their chief prey. Their powerful legs are completely enclosed within the body; only the ankles and feet protrude. Heavy bones, not honeycombed with air sacs as most bird bones are, further equip them to be agile divers and strong underwater swimmers.
Loons rely on superb eyesight to locate their food and pursue it underwater. Prowling for fish, a loon slightly submerges its head and slowly turns it from side to side to look deep into the water in a unique behavior termed peering. Swift and powerful fliers, loons have been clocked at more than 75 miles an hour during migration to and from wintering grounds along the Atlantic coast. About 2 ft. long, with a wingspan measuring as much as 5 ft, 8-to-14 pound birds show a cruciform shape when they fly with necks outstretched.
Loons fascinated the early residents of N. America and their descendants. The Inuit, or Eskimos, still use loon skins for ornamental dress. Mang, the name of an Ojibwa clan of the western Great Lakes, translates as "loon" but also indicates "brave" or "proud." Mang legends say loons are special messengers of the gods, endowed with magical powers.
Indeed, in the early time when all was water, the Great Sprit of the Ojibwa asked if a creature would dive to the bottom and bring back mud - so there could be land for animals to walk upon. The otter, the beaver, and the muskrat dove, but each failed. The Great Spirit appealed to the loon, who dove deeply and returned with mud on his feet. The effort earned him the title Loon Who Made the World.
One of my chief interests has been loons' remarkable ability to vocalize. Calling primarily at night, when winds are gentle and sound carries far, they communicate with 4 basic sounds: hoots, wails, tremolos, and yodels.
Hoots are short, single notes - contact calls that the birds use to keep track of one another when in groups. Long, piercing wails, hauntingly similar to wolf howls, are used to summon a mate or to tell each other that they wish to get together. Tremolos, which signal general alarm or agitation as danger threatens nest or chicks, peal as a pulsating vibrato that rises higher and higher. This is the loon's so-called laugh - the maniacal cry that probably gave birth to the expression "crazy as a loon."
A yodel is the male's territorial call, each individual's slightly different from another's. I can easily identify an individual loon by his yodel and believe that the birds themselves use them as name tags.
Both sequence and pitch of notes in a yodel have been recognized as important in sending information. During studies in Northern Saskatchewan I broke a liitle more of the code of loon language. There I played recordings of the yodels of other loons to 86 loon pairs. In some of the recordings the placement of accents or stresses within calls had been modified with the assistance of Andrea Priori of Cornell Univ's Lab of Ornithology. The loons gave different responses to the altered yodels, suggesting that amplitude as well as sequence and pitch is important in encoding messages.

Judith McIntyre
National Geographic

and don't forget Doctorow's Loon Lake!

266: Wow, the single review is pretty negative.

I have not read that book, but I have a hard time believing Doctorow wrote something that bad. Only going by his other works.

That Mr. Durick aka Robert is such a troublemaker! Could be that because he apparently doesn't know where he lives (I've been trying to pry this out of him forever), he confuses places like Seattle and Portland, which after all are only 300 or so miles apart and have almost the same number of letters.

I am most definitely in Seattle. I know this because I cannot walk more than twenty feet without bumping into an offer to buy coffee: in coffeehouses, out of pushcarts, in gas stations, where they have signs not far from the gas pumps advertising for Super and Regular: Espresso, Regular, Decaf. In the frigging gas stations! Makes sense, actually: fuel up.

I'm pleased to report that the Elliott Bay Bookstore, formerly a landmark on Pioneer Square, has opened on Capitol Hill, 10th Avenue off Pike Street, in a big, sprawling space with wooden floors, like the last place, little benches to sit on, as in the other setup, and lotsa books. I actually bought one (I always procrastinate in bookstores and usually walk out without buying a thing). A Stefan Zweig novel, because I was so impressed by Chess Story, a novella I read last week.

Welcome to the Pacific Northwest, Pietro! How long will you be in Seattle? BTW, Seattle and Portland are only 172ish miles apart. Depending on how fast you drive, about a 3 hour drive up I-5. Regarding drivers, Washington drivers are very scary. I was up there in February for a Quilting Exposition and was frightened half the time. Avoid the freeways if you can... they are almost as scary as California drivers (sorry, 'Rique).

Now, for Coffee... If I have to drive more than 2 blocks to find a coffee kiosk, I know I am not in the PNW! Actually, in the rural areas it is more like 5. ;-)

All kidding aside, Have a great time with your daughter and have a venti-skinny-half caff-hazelnut-mocha latte for me would ya?

Finally saw some gray-haired people yesterday; a whole bunch of 'em, in fact, at an old army base just north of Ew-Dub (as the locals refer to the University of Washington); Magnuson Park now. It figures that these old-timers were gathered to buy books. A semiannual book fair where the Seattle library system sells all its discards for a buck each. People walking out with bulging knapsacks, shopping carts, suitcases, and grocery bags full of books; some of them perched on wheelchairs and walkers. Even I overcame my usual reticence and bought a few.

Today (70 degrees) I'll check out nature at Snoqualmie Falls; about an hour away, I'm told.

What an awe-inspiring spot you're enjoying right about now Peter.



Snowqualmie Falls

I went fishing in my pond this evening and caught two Crappy and one Bream that were keepers and a couple of smaller pan fish. I threw them all back in. What fun!

There was woodsmoke in the air for the first time the other day, just a whiff of it. There's something nostalgic about woodsmoke on a blue and yellow morning in autumn. Not like bushfire smoke on a hot red evening, which just smells like danger.

And wow, Snowqualmie Falls looks incredible.

geneg, is Crappy an actual name of an actual fish? Or an adjective?

I LOVE the PNW!!!! Awesome, photo, Pietro! Know you are having fun up there... how could you not? ;-)

Ciao!

Holy macaroly, Henri! How did you pull that off? That is exactly what I saw today,
Snoqualmie Falls (sans le double vay)! You fooled Tani, I see. She thought I posted it (obviously forgetting how technodeficient I am).

And what's with this PNW business? Fer chrissake, speak English, people. Or French. Or Italian. Anything but capital letters.

Awww, come on, Pietro! Pacific NorthWest!!!!

I assumed you had 'Rique post it for you... silly me. Was kinda wondering who all those folks were looking at the camera though.

Looks like Mrs. Grundy's sixth grade class, standing there below the waterfall. In fact they weren't there yesterday. There were only a few people down below, as the rest of us two or three or four hundred or so stood up above, looking at the falls and the river--I guess it was the Snoqualmie. A tourist sight, of course. But you can look at it for free. Also built there, overlooking the falls, the hotel I was told appeared in Twin Peaks, which was filmed there and in the adjacent town of North Bend (as distinct from Bend, which is much bigger, and in a different state, as you know, Tani).

Today I will try not to eat anything, or very little.

Chocolate, I guess I misspelled it. It's Crappie. There's a funny story associated with the name of this fish. When I was a lad it was pronounced "Crappy", hence my spelling error. Now, in this much more PC of times it is pronounced "Croppy", as in an imaginary adjective describing something growing as a crop. It's the same issue as Uranus with a long a sound (this is what it was for the first forty years of my life) and Uranus, with a short a. It's all in our inability to relate to body parts and body functions with even the remotest sense of maturity.

I've been thinking that when I get home (I'm in the computer room of a motel now, intended for business travelers), and back to the security blanket of my own computer, we should start still another iteration of the nature thread (I have a name in mind). So, what'd you think, people?

All votes will be counted and tabulated on Tuesday night (we had three votes the last time we did this) and a decision made on Wednesday morning, EDST (that's Eastern Daylight Savings Time, Tani). Maybe, if we're lucky, Sandydog will announce his vote through his favorite spokesman, Groucho Marx.

Lead on, oh mentoring one...

And except for the INK the other day, I do read acronyms fairly well, Pietro. Are you going to keep us in suspense over the name?

Woenelli, more Nature? Maybe I can squeeze out a little something. This Nature thread has me going back to Frazer's GOLDEN BOUGH. Earlier in my life I read it because I had to, now I enjoy every little second of the myth and the rituals. Slickpdx is the Frazer fancier around these parts. T'would be ever so lovely, did I say lovely, to have the Oregon sage piping in now and then. I have been dipping into Grave's WHITE GODDESS too. I likes the trees and the forests.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLafXKLcPcQ&feature=related
R.G.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JcJXrfwUiS4&feature=related

>279 geneg: It does seem a shame to change the names. They've even changed Rapeseed to Flaxseed, as if somehow maybe the name would influence the act?

However, here in Aus we still say Uranus with the long 'a', much to the hilarity of Year 10 boys, and others with their mentality. I say, why not, if it keeps them amused? Changing the English language just to prevent youthful minds from having a fairly harmless laugh is a bit sad.

The problem is if they are still giggling as grownups...

I remember one of the kids in "Harry Potter' making a joke about Uranus. I think it was Ron.

TWG
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3GxCJnPPl_A&feature=related

I saw Treme over the weekend - very good though it will be a tough one to get through every week.

A pound of oysters (or ersters, as they once said in Greenpernt, Brooklyn) for $6.99 in Pike's Market. Not bad. I sat near that market, gazing at the Puget Sound and the Olympic peninsula across the way, with its line of snow-covered mountains on the horizon, saw the ferry cross to Bainbridge and other islands, and remembered that watching the bateaux mouches on the Seine was one of the few things Celine claimed to actually like. (He didn't like much.) But there was a roaring highway below the overhang on which this pocket park sat, so it was far from an idyllic moment.

I like Celine's anger. He is so angry that he become's funny in a "spitting Tasmanian Devil" kind of way.

He sounds very much like an angry Flaubert vociferating in his letters against " les Bourgeois"

Important thing to keep in mind from two great writers. One of Fairy Tales and another of what he would call 'Romances.'
First:
"But a man may then, imagine in your work what he pleases, what you never meant!"
Not what he pleases, but what he can. If he be not a true man, he will draw evil out of the best; we need not mind how he treats any work of art! If he be a true man, he will imagine true things; what matter whether I meant them or not? They are there none the less that I cannot claim putting them there! One difference between God's work and man's is, that, while God's work cannot mean more than he meant, man's must mean more than he meant. For in everything that God has made, there is layer upon layer of ascending significance; also he expresses the thought in higher and higher kinds of thought, it is God's things, his embodied thoughts, which alone a man has to use, modified and adapted to his own purposes, for the expression of his thoughts; therefore he cannot help his words and figures falling into such combinations in the mind of another as he had himself not foreseen, so many are the thoughts allied to every other thought, so many are the relations involved in every figure, so many the facts hinted in every symbol. A man may well himself discover truth in what he wrote; for he was dealing all the time with things that came from thoughts beyond his own.
"But surely you would explain your idea to one who asked you?"
I say again, if I cannot draw a horse, I will not write THIS IS A HORSE under what I foolishly meant for one. Any key to a work of imagination would be nearly, if not quite as absurd. The tale is there, not to hide, but to show: if it show nothing at your window, do not open your door to it; leave it out in the cold. To ask me to explain, is to say, "Roses! Boil them , or we won't have them!? My tales may not be roses, but I will not boil them.
So long as I think my dog can bark, I will not sit up to bark for him.
If a writer's aim be logical conviction, he must spare no logical pains, not merely to be understood, but to escape being misunderstood; where his object is to move by suggestion, to cause to imagine, then let him assail the soul of his reader as the wind assails an aeolian harp. If there be music in my reader, I would gladly wake it. Let fairy-tale of mine go for a firefly that now flashes, now is dark, but may flash again. Caught in a hand which does not love its kind, it will turn to an insignificant, ugly thing, that can neither flash nor fly.
The best way with music, I imagine, is not to bring the forces of our intellect to bear upon it, but to be still and let it work on the parts of us for whose sake it exists. We spoil countless precious things by intellectual greed. He who will be a man, and will not be a child, must - he cannot help himself - become a little man, that is, a dwarf. He will, however, need no consolation, for he is sure to think himself a very large creature indeed.
If any strain of my "broken music" make a child's eyes flash, or his mother's grow for a moment dim, my labor will not have been in vain.

from an essay called THE FANTASTIC IMAGINATION
George MacDonald (1824 - 1905)

The third tale is about a shepherdess who meets an entrancing young manon the hillside, who begs her to come away with him. To show what he can offer he tells her to pick up a handful of sheep droppings, and when she does so, she finds they are pellets of gold. But she is fearful, and promises to meet the young man again, and runs home to her parents, who summon the priest. So, when next the young man comes to meet her, he cannot enter the holy circle the priest had drawn about the girl and her parents, and himself, and, in a rage, the young man bursts into flames of fire and flies away, cursing. And when the girl looks at the gold in her hand, it is filth again.
These are the three tales on which our opera is founded. I am not going to tell you how the composer, who is her own librettist, has put them together to make her story, because I do not myself like to be instructed too carefully about something I am going to see, and hear. But I think you will find that you are being invited into the real world of the Celt, and that is a very different place from the world of BRIGADOON and FINIAN'S RAINBOW and other fake Celtic offerings that appeal to people who have no seriousness of spirit.
That's the nub of the thing, you see - seriousness of spirit. It doesn't mean heaviness of heart, or a lack of fantasy, but it does mean an awareness of influences that touch our lives, sometimes in ways that seem cruel and unfeeling, and sometimes in ways that open up a glory which can never be forgotten. In our nervous, fretful time we are possessed by the illusion that anything which we cannot explain is somehow an injustice, and that any splendor of sprit which is enjoyed by some fortunate soul must surely be available to everybody. Because we are all superficially democratic and often really believe that all men are created equal. We believe in Disney Land , where we can all possess the fairy world and the land of fantasy simply by paying our admission at the door, and carrying our dull , superficial selves inside, to be welcomed by Mickey Mouse, the Fairy King of our brave new world. We cry pitifully for perpetual youth as our population grows older and older, but we have forgotten the Land of the Ever Young, the land of the Lordly Ones, who may put out a finger to us or may, perhaps, decide to leave us to age and decay. We suppose - God help us! - that the Land of the Ever Young is Florida.
Our age has lost its sense of wonder, and with it a sense of Fate. Or does it only seem so?
Tonight's opera brings us wonder and the workings of Fate, and it is perhaps through art that we preserve for our time the riches of the past.

from HAPPY ALCHEMY: The Pleasures of Music and Theatre - SCOTTISH FOLKLORE AND OPERA (this essay)
by Robertson Davies

Yo, Pietro! Tomorrow is Wednesday....

Yes, and now it's tomorrow, Wednesday, and I'm home again, after a red-eye flight. And since I see that no one has expressed a preference to begin a new nature thread, let's just toddle along on this one awhile longer.

A mild Spring day here in the metro Detroit area. You can almost hear things as they grow.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4IYRgQ9tYSg&feature=related

A little musick for the season by Steve Winwood doing his best imitation of Junior Walker and the All Stars.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fWptXUblA4E

Yes, it's springy here too. Now the birds sing in the afternoon, not just the morning. Which reminded me that though spring was a bit further along in Seattle, I didn't hear birds. So much for cities, however much trumpeted they are.

Welcome home, Pietro! I must tell you, it has been quite *dead* around here of late. I even ventured out to hot topics and found the strangest stuff going on and thought "what a waste."

Well, wouldn't you know it we had beautiful springy weather for almost a week and here we are on April 21st and it's snowing. My poor poor tulips and daffys... Will it ever end??? Oy ve.

We are approaching the magical 300... I think that everyone else is enjoying their respective springs and not paying attention to the vote. I humbly submit that we should shake things up... What say you?

The point wasn't to shake things up, my dear, but to go to a new thread when the old one got too long to load in under ten seconds or so. With Nature III, which has had less photos to slow it down, the polis appears content ... for the moment. When they become a rabble, we will certainly move on.

On deadness: As a naturalist you oughta know we all need a bit of fallow time now and then--even you, firecracker. Like me, back here after a two hour nap, having been red-eyed from ten last night to six this morning on a flight seat in front of two little children, one adorably curious and commenting on everything (kinda like me), and the other who merely screamed.

On freeways: Who'da thunk it? Proust struck again in the Northwest, this time in the form of a five-lane freeway. Driving along transported me back to my California days. It felt like I was floating on the road, with all the room to the left and right, instead of maneuvering the tight lanes of blacktop we have here, with patched and rutted pavement thrown into the mix. It struck me, barreling home (we drive faster in New York State than in most other places), that I don't live in the same America as many of the rest of you. Even in Chicago, I believe, the Dan Ryan Expressway has five or so lanes.

*rabble rabble*

Well, okay. Now we're gettin' somewhere. Two votes for change, and none against. After we hit message 300, it shall be done. No cheating, Tani: listing golf scores in the Deschutes Open or capital letters that're supposed to mean something. We need at least two genuine messages.

299!

(ETA: Oh sorry. You wanted a real message. Does this count?

NEXT TO LAST!)

Prez bam-bam is now targeting Wall St.? Timmy "the shimmie" Geitner will doubtless be leading the charge. Oh My God, the Wall Streeters are shitting in their pants. News flash to bam-bam: the damage is done, all the cony-catchers have made off with their takings. It's too late there bam-bam. Why don't you set up another powder-puff basketball game. One on one with that giant of the people Romm Emmanuel. What a f--k--g clown show.

Am I on the wrong channell?

Fitting that Porius would end this thread and that Anna would set him up. We're moving, to:

Nature Redux

http://www.librarything.com/topic/89569

Hurry up and get there and fill it up toot sweet since I embarrassingly misspelled a common word that begins with p and thus am eager to get to the thread after this next one, to make amends.

Back on #279 Gene,

Can not also, the cardiac term be pronounced as "An-Gine-uh"?

(giggles like an 8th grader and scurries away...)

I had an attack of an-gine-uh when I was in Vietnam. What is the proper pronunciation now? I've never pronounced it any other way. Of course I get what you are alluding to, but it sounds absolutely nothing like pussy to me.

Is this too much for the staid salonistas?

Nah, it's okay, since no one's reading this thread anymore but you two, and now me.

Just when you thought it was the 3 of you:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=unmkX15AeN8

I posted this a few minutes ago. This time I won't use the invisible ink.

I'm still here.

If you find a woman named Regina on Yahoo Personals, how do you pronounce her name?

Robert

Ah yes, the Ruh-GEEN-a monologues...

Yeah, I go with Ruh-geena-uh. I don't think I've ever heard differently. However, when in reference to one who reigns, I pronounce it Ruh-giin-uh. As in Victoria, Regina.

There was once a ball player named Enos Slaughter. Every one called him Country.

We are having this conversation in a technically dead thread, aren't we.

tecknically.

But spring is in the air. Why not a rebirthing?

Oh! I did that, probably twenty years ago. Guided deep breathing. The first session was momentous, then nothing.

Robert

Durick (aka Robert), you are what we used to call "a kick in the head." That's a good thing, by the way.

Ain't that a Kick in the Head.