The Nature of Things

In December of 2013, I read a book by Elizabeth Gilbert that I thoroughly enjoyed. No, it wasn't Eat, Pray, Love . It was a novel written after that blockbuster book. It was about a woman scientist in the 19th century and that book was recently recalled to mind by something that I read. I reread my review of it and decided to feature it as a "Throwback Thursday" post. I hope you enjoy it. *~*~*~* The Signature of All Things by Elizabeth Gilbert: A review My rating:  4 of 5 stars Elizabeth Gilbert of  Eat, Pray, Love  fame has written a remarkable novel featuring a remarkable woman of the 19th century. Alma Whittaker, born in 1800 to the richest man in Philadelphia, grew up to become, in fact, a female counterpart to Charles Darwin in the century of Darwin, a time when the idea of a  female  scientist would have been laughed at. Before we meet Alma, though, we meet her father, Henry Whittaker, a low-born Englishman who was banished because he stole plants from K...

My line-up of blooms in December looks almost exactly like my November Bloom Day post . Here we are at mid-December, still waiting for our first frost of the season.  Maybe it's just as well that we have not had any cold weather and very little cool weather because I still have a couple of dozen of these little guys munching their way through the last of my milkweed. Monarch butterflies have been passing through my garden on a daily basis since early spring and they've left behind a good-sized population. I am encouraged by the presence of these caterpillars to think that perhaps the beautiful butterflies that have, in recent years, been beset by loss of habitat, terrible winter weather on their wintering grounds in Mexico, and losses from the profligate use of pesticides and herbicides in the United States may actually be making a comeback. The caterpillars are present in different sizes and different stages of their development. These are getting close to the end of their liv...

The Narrows by Michael Connelly My rating: 5 of 5 stars When it comes to reading series, I admit I am obsessive/compulsive. I read the books in the order of their publication and, if I find that I have accidentally read one out of order, I circle back and read the overlooked book(s) as soon as possible. Michael Connelly's Harry Bosch series is one of my favorites, but I hate it when he combines Harry with one of his other primary characters in books. I don't really mind Mickey, the Lincoln Lawyer, but I never liked Terry McCaleb. So, when it came time for me to read #10 in the Bosch series and I downloaded it to my Kindle and noticed the description of it as "Terry McCaleb #3" I groaned aloud and considered skipping it. Then my OCD kicked in and I started to read. It didn't take long for my groan to become a chuckle. In the first few pages of the book, we find that Connelly has killed off Terry McCaleb. Nice move, Michael! Terry had had a heart transplant and had...

Pam Ayers is an English poet, comedian, songwriter, and presenter of radio and television programs in the U.K. I think she catches the spirit of the season pretty well with this poem.  Goodwill to Men - Give Us Your Money      by Pam Ayers It was Christmas Eve on a Friday The shops was full of cheer, With tinsel in the windows, And presents twice as dear. A thousand Father Christmases, Sat in their little huts, And folk was buying crackers And folk was buying nuts. All up and down the country, Before the light was snuffed, Turkeys they get murdered, And cockerels they got stuffed, Christmas cakes got marzipanned, And puddin's they got steamed Mothers they got desperate And tired kiddies screamed. Hundredweight's of Christmas cards, Went flying through the post, With first class postage stamps on those, You had to flatter most. Within a million kitchens, Mince pies was being made, On everyone's radio, "White Christmas", it was played. Out in the frozen countryside ...

A roundup of the week's news of birds and the environment :  A handsome Redhead Duck ( Aythya americana ) which I photographed on a small lake near the Rio Grande in Big Bend National Wildlife Refuge. *~*~*~* Some referred to it as an "airpocalypse." It was smog so thick that it brought Beijing to a standstill and caused the Chinese  government to issue a "red alert," warning people to stay indoors and to take precautions against breathing the polluted air. *~*~*~* Should the world's nations, now in climate talks in Paris, agree to limit climatic warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius instead of the previously agreed upon 2 degrees? It would a goal that is extraordinarily difficult to achieve because the greenhouse gases already released into the atmosphere and expected to be released - meaning it's too late to stop them - will most likely heat the planet by that amount.  *~*~*~* The climate talks are more urgent for some nations than for others. They are mos...

Magna Carta: The Birth of Liberty by Dan Jones My rating: 3 of 5 stars I have previously enjoyed reading Dan Jones' books, The Plantagenets and The Wars of the Roses , and I find the history of 13th and 14th century England and Europe in general quite fascinating, so I looked forward to reading Jones' new book, Magna Carta: The Birth of Liberty . But even though the subject interests me and Jones is a very good writer of histories meant for the general population, for some reason, I just couldn't get connected to the flow of the narrative. Maybe it had more to do with my distractions than with the quality of the writing. As most people probably do, I had some general knowledge of the Magna Carta as a founding document of western democracies but I wasn't especially knowledgable about the intricacies of how it came about and the background that led up to it. Nor was I really aware that the original didn't last more than a matter of months and that it was reissued ag...