The Nature of Things

Sumer is icumen in, Lhude sing cuccu! Groweþ sed and bloweþ med And springþ þe wde nu, Sing cuccu! - Middle English lyrics of English folk song Summer has come in, Loudly sing, Cuckoo! The seed grows and the meadow blooms And the wood springs anew, Sing, Cuckoo! - Modern English translation of lyrics The calendar may still say it is spring, but when the temperature is in the upper 90s and the humidity is close to the same, I'd say that summer has definitely "come in". For several days now, my area has enjoyed(?) those conditions and there is no doubt in my mind that summer is definitely here. Even the cuckoo agrees. The Yellow-billed Cuckoo has been present here for some weeks now and I hear its quirky calls high in the trees often throughout the day. This is the bird that, as a child, I knew as the "rain crow". This solitary and secretive bird was a well-known visitor to our woods in summer. Its call was said to presage the coming of rain. As farm peopl...

HAPPY MEMORIAL DAY WEEKEND TO ALL!!! ALWAYS REMEMBER...

I can't bear it. I can't bear to watch television images of what is happening in the Gulf of Mexico, my backyard, and on the Gulf Coast. I can hardly bear to read of it, only if I skip over the most excruciating parts, the parts about helpless animals caught in this man-made catastrophe. Anyone who cares about animals and the environment, for that matter anyone who cares about his/her fellow humans who are suffering because of this biggest environmental disaster in the history of our country, is being daily bombarded with hard punches to the heart as this unspeakable befouling of the earth continues. How did we ever let this happen? Why do we allow drilling for oil a mile down in the ocean when we have no effective plan for dealing with potential explosions and oil spills? Are we truly so addicted to oil that we have lost all perspective on what is important? Even a bird knows that its nest mustn't be fouled. Are we not as smart as birds? The president has reversed h...

I've been thinking about global climate change deniers because on one of my other blogs , I've been having a conversation with a reader on the subject. This reader is a passionate denier, and anytime I mention a story about climate change on the blog, I can expect to get a comment telling me it is all a load of horse pucky. Why is it that otherwise intelligent people, who would normally accept overwhelming scientific evidence on a subject, reject such evidence when it comes to climate change? They will argue until the cows come home that it is all a hoax. The scientists are lying to us ( but Fox News is telling the truth!) and very few people believe them. And, of course, if a majority of people do not believe that climate change exists, that means it is not true, correct? Truly, the mind boggles. It is very likely, I would imagine, that a polling agency could find evidence that a majority of people in this country believe the earth is flat and that the sun revolves aroun...

Only ten short years ago the budget of this country was in the black. We had a substantial surplus and things were looking really bright for the future of the country. Then came the selection of a new president by the Supreme Court in 2000 and things began to turn around. Over the next eight years, through two expensive wars, one of them totally unnecessary, through unfunded drug programs and various other unfunded initiatives, and through tax cuts that allowed the richest people and corporations in the country to pay minimal taxes, all of the surplus was used up and we sank into the red. Way into the red. Meantime, a refusal to regulate financial institutions, oil and other energy companies was driving the overall economy into a very deep ditch, taking ordinary citizens along for the plunge. Now that the country has been driven into debt and to the brink of ruin by the policies of that Supreme Court selected president, so-called libertarians and patriots are screaming about the sta...

I've been going to bed with Ian Rankin this week and it has been great fun! Most readers of mysteries probably are familiar with Rankin and with his detective Inspector Rebus of Edinburgh, but I've only just made his acquaintance, although I've known about him for years, of course. There are around twenty books in the Rebus series. I've finished one and two, Knots and Crosses and Hide and Seek . Now I'm reading number three, Tooth and Nail . These books are fast reads and are very hard to put down once you get into the story. Rebus is an interesting and flawed character. The reader can easily empathize with his weaknesses and cheer him on as he stumbles along trying to solve the latest murder mystery. Part of his attractiveness, I think, comes from his surroundings. Edinburgh is full of history and quirkiness, and Rankin has a way of painting a picture of the city with very spare language. There are no flowery passages. No word is wasted, but one feels the...