The Nature of Things

The still nearly full Harvest Moon was high in the western sky on Friday morning when I hauled myself out of my comfy bed and began to make preparations for a day of birding. We were going to Brazoria National Wildlife Refuge on a day trip and we wanted to get there while the birds were still active in the morning before they settled down for their mid-day siesta. Since the refuge is some two hours away from our home, it required an early start. When we arrived at the refuge two hours later, the moon was still a pale presence above the western horizon, but the sun was up and would soon extinguish its light. Among the first things that I noticed at the refuge were the wildflowers. They were everywhere, producing riotous points of color among the browns and greens of the wetland grasses. Purple seemed to be the predominant color. But there was a lot of yellow among the purple, including these tiny flowers that look like some kind of coreopsis. This was obviously a legume of some kind....

Here we are in the middle of the 29th annual Banned Books Week , so in honor of that occasion, let's take a look at some of the books that people were trying to get banned last year. These are the ten books that were most often complained about and requested to be removed from the shelves by patrons of libraries. I have to admit that I'm not even familiar with some of these books that are specifically for children or young people, but I may have to read them anyway as a protest. 1. TTYL by Lauren Myracle: Never heard of it and that author's last name sounds made up, but what do I know? I lead a very sheltered life. People complained about it because of sexual explicitness, offensive language, unsuitability for its targeted age group, and drugs. 2. And Tango makes Three by Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell: This one was knocked off its #1 perch where it had been for a while. The story of homosexual penguins really gets some peoples' knickers in a twist. 3...

The political news frustrates and angers me. We seem to be a people determined to undo everything that the geniuses who founded this country set out to bequeath to us. But it takes news of what we are doing to the environment to really put me in a blue funk for days at a time. Like this article that I read on Huffington Post this week about nine types of habitats that are seriously endangered. 1. Mangroves: The mangrove is not a plant, it is a habitat that can contain a great diversity of individual species of plants - like holly, plumbago, hibiscus, legumes, acanthus, and myrtle. These complex habitats do the important work of capturing carbon and provide shelter for many species of animals. Unfortunately, they exist on valuable real estate along coasts and we know what happens when the needs of the planet collide with man's greed. Greed wins. From 1980 to 2000, 35% of mangrove habitats disappeared under the developers' earthmovers. 2. Coral reefs: These are beauti...

I guess most kids, at some time in their growing-up years, become fascinated with dinosaurs and consider what it would be like to spend their lives digging in hot, dry, out-of-the-way places around the world, looking for their quarry. In this, I was like most kids. I wanted to be a dinosaur hunter when I grew up. Not just any old dinosaur hunter, but a world-famous dinosaur hunter, the kind that gets invited onto late night television shows to banter with the host. Well, that dream, like many others, went astray. I never got to go on a dinosaur dig, but I still like to read about those who do and watch those Discovery Channel shows about them. These days, there is plenty to read about. If it's Thursday, there must be news of another new dinosaur species having been found. This week, we dinosaur fans get a bonanza - not one but two new species have been found in the wilds of the Utah desert . Both of the new dinosaurs are rhinoceros-sized animals and seem to have been closely ...

I love fiction set in ancient Rome and when it is a mystery, my favorite genre, so much the better. The Marcus Didius Falco series by Lindsey Davis is one of my favorites of the type. I've read them all and now I've read this latest one. I have to say it was not my favorite of the lot, but it was very good, very entertaining and kept me guessing, although I did have a glimmer of the solution about two-thirds of the way through. The book starts with a double tragedy. Falco loses two family members in one day and the losses change his life forever. While he is working through his bereavement, he is presented with the mystery of the disappearance of a couple who had been supplying his antique dealer/auctioneer father with statuary. A shipment was delivered but when payment was attempted the suppliers could not be found. Soon Falco is on the trail of the disappeared pair and that leads him into confrontation with a notorious and violent family. A family which may very well b...