The Nature of Things

The readers' social network Goodreads sponsors a poetry contest each month and publishes the winner in its monthly newsletter. Their last winner was by a poet named Jena Strong and it certainly struck a "strong" chord with me. In thinking about a poem to feature for my Mother's Day post, I read Strong's poem again and it seemed to speak to me of mothers and their unconditional love of their children no matter who they are or what road they choose or are forced to take in life. And so, in honor of the day, rather than a saccharin, tear-jerking verse, let's enjoy a gritty, full-bodied poem about acceptance of people and their lives as lived. Throwdown by Jena Strong give me the drag queens, dolled up and delicious the two moms bickering over the dishes the orphans, adopted, the chosen, the trannies the witches, the protestors, tattooed laughing grannies the boys wearing tutus and all the shirtless daughters of the revolution playing basketball on the broken co...

A couple of weeks ago, we met Henri the bored French cat. This week, he's back for an encore and his ennui-inducing circumstances have not improved! What a life he leads. Quelle tragique! 

More bad news from the global warming front . It seems that there is never any good news to report from this front. Scientists report that this week, for the first time, their sensors have measured a daily average of more than 400 parts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Carbon dioxide is the primary fuel that is heating up the planet. Now, if you are like me, that figure by itself may mean nothing to you. But prior to  the industrial revolution, the proportion of carbon dioxide in Earth’s atmosphere hovered around 280 parts per million. As late as 1958, when scientists began measuring average carbon dioxide levels at an observatory on Mauna Loa in Hawaii, the figure was around 320 ppm. This means that in the last 50 years we have added more carbon dioxide to the atmosphere than in all the 100 years prior.  Scientists say that the last time carbon dioxide levels were this high was about 4 million years ago while Australopithecus still walked the Earth.  We a...

Graduation season is almost upon us. All over the country, students are finishing up years of study and will be going into the world to begin their adult lives. But before they can do that they have to endure the tradition of the commencement speech. Most of those speeches are instantly forgettable. I certainly can't remember anything about mine that I heard all those years ago. But occasionally someone makes one that is worth remembering. In 2005, the writer David Foster Wallace made such a memorable speech to the graduating class at Kenyon College. It has become something of a phenomenon and has been widely disseminated through audio tapes and videos. Now someone has made a short movie utilizing long excerpts from the speech and, frankly, it's a gem. There is a lot of wisdom there. Watch and enjoy. Hearing these words and watching the film make one even sadder to contemplate that wisdom from this man, juxtaposed against his own tragic end as a suicide three short years later....

Chief Inspector Armand Gamache and his team from the Sûreté du Québec have survived (at least most of them) a terrible shootout with terrorists at a warehouse in Quebec, but they did not survive unscathed.  Gamache and his second in command Jean Guy Beauvoir still suffer from their wounds and from the effects of post traumatic stress. But life goes on. The job goes on. Murderers still have to be found and put away. Gamache and his team are once again called to the idyllic hidden village of Three Pines where murder seems to be a cottage industry. This time, an outsider has been murdered. She was an artist and former art critic and childhood friend of local artist Clara Morrow.  However, their friendship had ended in acrimony long ago and now, inexplicably, the victim had turned up at a time of celebration for Clara. She had had her one-woman art show at the famed Musée in Montreal and she and her friends had returned to Three Pines to celebrate the show with a party. Sometime d...

(Cross-posted from Backyard Birder .) My garden is currently experiencing a remarkable invasion of  Baltimore Orioles . There is a smattering of  Orchard Orioles  as well, but mostly it's Baltimores. It started last Friday when I  noticed the first one  in the yard. After that, I filled my oriole feeder with nectar and put an orange half on it and hung it on a crape myrtle tree near my patio. Since then I've had a constant stream of the brilliant visitors. My next door neighbor has hung her oriole feeder as well and, between our two yards, it is common to see a dozen or more of the brightly colored birds at once. I find this quite amazing since I've never had more than one or two orioles at a time on migration in the past. Whatever confluence of events has worked to bring these visitors my way this spring, I am enjoying them tremendously and when I think of this season it will be as the "Time of the Orioles."  It's not uncommon to see several birds waiting ...

Sanskrit Salutation to the Dawn Listen to the salutation to the dawn, Look to this day for it is life, the very life of life. In its brief course lie all the verities and realities of our existence. The bliss of growth, the splendour of beauty, For yesterday is but a dream and tomorrow is only a vision, But today well spent makes every yesterday a dream  of happiness and every tomorrow a vision of hope Look well therefore to this day Such is the salutation to the dawn. Hat tip to Snap at Tales from Twisty Lane where I found this lovely salutation a few days ago.