The Nature of Things

It's winter and snow is falling over much of the northern hemisphere and so we need a poem about the snowfall on this first Sunday in January. As the white stuff blankets much of the country, let us celebrate the silence of the winter snowfall, so unlike the boisterous rainstorms of spring and summer. The Snowfall Is So Silent   by  Miguel de Unamuno translated by  Robert Bly   The snowfall is so silent, so slow, bit by bit, with delicacy it settles down on the earth and covers over the fields. The silent snow comes down white and weightless; snowfall makes no noise, falls as forgetting falls, flake after flake. It covers the fields gently while frost attacks them with its sudden flashes of white; covers everything with its pure and silent covering; not one thing on the ground anywhere escapes it. And wherever it falls it stays, content and gay, for snow does not slip off as rain does, but it stays and sinks in. The flakes are skyflowers, pale lilies from the clou...

The ice is thick in Antarctica. Moreover, there are record cold temperatures in the Northeast and Midwest. There have even been cold days recently here in Southeast Texas. Therefore, global warming must be a hoax, because if it is cold where I am at the moment, then the idea that Earth is heating up is a fallacy. At least, that is the theory of the climate change deniers as gleefully expressed on Twitter, right wing talk radio, and Fox News this week. Of course, none of these wackos acknowledge the fact that while Antarctica is always cold and it is cold in winter in the northern hemisphere, in the southern hemisphere, many places are experiencing record heat waves. Australia, for example, where temperatures are expected to be above 120 degrees Fahrenheit in some areas over the next few days.  And Earth overall IS   warming up . Alarmingly. The reasons for record cold temperatures in the northern hemisphere in winter and for record storms throughout the year are explained by...

The end of a year brings about thoughts of how to sum up that year. That's essentially what all those year-end lists of the ten worst and ten best are all about. We want to find some short-hand way of thinking about the year just past. As I think over the last twelve months, I am struck by how often our news was dominated by the idea of the poor, oppressed white person. Especially the poor oppressed white man. Poor oppressed white men like the "Duck Dynasty" guy who had his hand slapped for expressing his homophobic and racist and misogynistic views. Then, of course, there is Fox News' annual hysteria and hypocrisy regarding what they are pleased to call the "War on Christmas." What they really mean is the war on white Christmas as was made plain by their TV hostess Megyn Kelly's amazing freak-out over the idea that anyone could even imagine that Santa Claus could be anything but white! Because, you know, Santa Claus "just is white." Oh, and, ...

I'M BUSIL Y PLANNING A NEW YEAR'S DAY BIRDING TRIP AND MAKING MY LONG LIST OF RESOLUTIONS FOR 2014. YES, THEY ARE THE SAME RESOLUTIONS I MAKE EVERY YEAR - IMPROVEMENTS THAT I KNOW I NEED TO MAKE TO MY HABITS AND MY CHARACTER. I KEEP HOPING THAT ONE OF THESE YEARS THE MAGIC WILL TAKE EFFECT AND I WILL BECOME THAT NEW AND IMPROVED PERSON THAT I LONG TO SEE WHEN I LOOK IN THE MIRROR. BUT I CAN'T LET 2013 END WITHOUT TAKING A MOMENT FROM MY PLANNING AND MY RESOLVING TO DO BETTER TO WISH YOU, DEAR READER, A HAPPY AND HEALTHY 2014. SO FROM MY HOUSE TO YOURS - HAPPY NEW YEAR!!! 'Cherry Nymph' amaryllis

My rating: 4 of 5 stars I remembered Tovah Martin from some of the gardening shows I used to watch on TV, back when there were actual gardening shows on TV, so I was interested to read her book on houseplants. She is also the author of a number of other gardening books, none of which, I admit, I had ever read. The uninitiated tend to equate indoor plants with that dusty, forgotten philodendron standing in some dark corner of the house, but according to Martin, the choices for indoor plants are much more extensive than philodendrons, African violets, and orchids. She is an evangelist for adding plants of many different varieties to the indoor garden. She writes of using spring bulbs, lush perennials, succulents, even flowering vines and trees indoors. The key to the survival of  all these plants is, of course, light, water, feeding, grooming, and pruning, especially light and water, and Martin gives practical advice on how to provide what these indoor plants need. She gives tips on ...

In only two more days we will be seeing in the year 2014. Where did 2013 go? I would never have believed it when I was a child, but I have learned as I get older that time does speed up. The years whiz by before we have time to fully experience them. And what can we do about that? Nothing. Nothing but prepare to ring in the new year and hope for better things from it than we got from the old year. The poet Alfred Tennyson knew about that wish. One of the most well-loved of the Victorian poets, he wrote this poem about seeing out the old year and seeing in the new and about the hopes that the new year will bring good things to humankind. In Memoriam , [Ring out, wild bells]   by  Lord Alfred Tennyson Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,    The flying cloud, the frosty light:    The year is dying in the night; Ring out, wild bells, and let him die. Ring out the old, ring in the new,    Ring, happy bells, across the snow:  ...

Here's a fun activity for your Saturday. The New York Times has a language quiz that will pinpoint from where in the United States the dialect that your speak is most likely to originate. In other words, it tells you where you are from. I was very skeptical of this. I don't think I have an accent. My speech is fairly bland and without, I thought, any particular markers that would identify my place of origin. Boy, was I wrong! I took the test and answered the questions honestly and at the end, the map glowed red all over...Mississippi. Bingo! That is where I grew up, although I haven't lived there for almost forty years. Will the test be able to identify where you originated? Give it a try and find out. Click here to take the dialect quiz .