The Nature of Things

First, a poem about the beauty of late-blooming flowers. Autumn Flowers by Jones Very Still blooming on, when Summer-flowers all fade, The golden rods and asters fill the glade; The tokens they of an Exhaustless Love, That ever to the end doth constant prove. To one fair tribe another still succeeds, As still the heart new forms of beauty needs; Till these, bright children of the waning year! Its latest born have come our souls to cheer. They glance upon us from their fringed eyes, And to their look our own in love replies; Within our hearts we find for them a place, As for the flowers, which early Spring-time grace. Despond not traveller! on life's lengthened way, When all thy early friends have passed away; Say not, " No more the beautiful doth live, And to the earth a bloom and fragrance give. " To every season has our Father given Some tokens of his love to us from heaven; Nor leaves us here, uncheered, to walk alone, When all we loved and prized, in youth, has gone. ...

A roundup of the week's news of birds and the environment : An American Kestrel, surely the prettiest of small falcons, keeps an eye out for a meal while perched on a bare limb on a brilliant fall day on the Katy Prairie. *~*~*~* The devastating wildfires in northern California continue and the long-term effects they will have on the ecosystem there are difficult to calculate. As of this writing, the death toll of humans stands at 35 and damage to the biological community beyond the human communities is incalculable. There are 9,000 firefighters battling as many as 17 separate fires and 90,000 people have been forced from their homes. At least 5,700 of those homes have been destroyed. The destructive force of the wildfires has been enhanced by human activities in the region. *~*~*~* The administrator of the EPA and his overlord are in the process of taking a wrecking ball to the Clean Power Plan , as well as every other effort by the Obama Administration and previous administrati...

What serendipitous timing. The day after I started reading her latest book, the announcement came that Jesmyn Ward was the recipient of one of this year's MacArthur "Genius" grants. Having now finished the book, I concur with MacArthur's assessment. Jesmyn Ward is a genius. When this book first came out and was reviewed, I remember reading that Ward kept a copy of William Faulkner's Nobel Prize acceptance speech hanging above her desk. In that speech, he admonished writers to write from the heart and to wrestle with the immortal truths of "love and honor and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice." It's clear that she has fully internalized the message of those words. In Sing, Unburied, Sing , she has ticked each of those boxes of the immortal truths. In this book as in her 2011 National Book Award-winning Salvage the Bones (still sitting in my reading queue waiting to be read), Ward takes us to Bois Sauvage, Mississippi, that Gulf Coast town ...

The people who have assumed control of our federal government and who are notably hostile to the idea of separation of church and state are doing everything possible to give employers the right to impose their religious views on their employees. Hence the recent rolling back of the ACA mandate on contraceptives . This reminded me of something I had written way back in 2012 when the fast food corporation Chick-fil-A was much in the news over their president's intolerance and his desire to impose his intolerance on others. I suspect that corporation is feeling very comfortable and more self-righteous than ever in the era of Trumpism. ~~~ Thursday, August 2, 2012 The Chick-fil-A brouhaha Apparently the fast food franchise Chick-fil-A is  making money hand over fist  on the brouhaha generated by its president's intolerant comments concerning gay marriage. The whole thing was ginned up by Mike Huckabee, the Fox News commentator, who called for a national appreciation day for Chick-...

Various people who have read my reviews of C.J. Box's books  (the few that I've read) have suggested to me that I should read Craig Johnson's Longmire series. They kept telling me that he was a very good writer. So curiosity got the better of me and I decided to see for myself, and after reading the first book in the series, I have to say that I don't think they steered me wrong.   Now, no one will mistake Johnson's writing for great literature, but it is highly entertaining. He writes with humor and a light touch and a fine eye for the Wyoming landscape and culture. He's created some interesting and well-described characters that the reader can invest in and care about. The one thing that this first book might have used was a better editor. I was frequently annoyed by the sloppy editing. For example, when the sheriff is securing a crime site, it is written as "sight". Later when he placed a piece of evidence on the bar, he "sat' the evidence ...

Like many gardeners, I grow milkweed because I think it is pretty but mainly for the butterflies. Butterflies of many kinds enjoy sipping from its flowers, but butterflies like the Monarch and the Queen are completely dependent upon it for the nurturing of their larvae.  As we know, the Monarch in particular has been declining in recent years and one of the reasons has been the destruction of milkweed plants by industrial and agricultural development along its migration route across the continent. Throughout the year, the Monarchs flit through my garden and many of them lay their eggs on the milkweed plants there. And soon I find their caterpillars happily munching their way through the leaves of the plants. A heavy crop of caterpillars can completely strip the leaves from a plant in a few days. Through our long growing season, an individual plant may regrow its leaves several times. Nearing the end of the season, the plants develop their feathery seeds which will be spread by the ...