The Nature of Things

A roundup of the week's news of birds and the environment : Yellow-rumped Warblers have been back in the area for a while now. I hear their cheerful chips whenever I am outside during the day. So, another winter visitor can be ticked on my list. Most have been accounted for by this time. *~*~*~*  The big environmental news of the week was the inferno devouring southern California . More than 120,000 people have had to flee their homes. Some ever-cautious scientists acknowledge that the fires this year have likely been exacerbated by the effects of climate change. Is this what our future will be? *~*~*~* The current administration in Washington continued to take a wrecking ball approach to their conservatorship of public lands this week, as the president made his long anticipated announcement about reducing the areas protected in Bear Ears National Monument and the Grand Staircase-Escalante . More such announcements are expected as conservation organizations and affected tribes j...

First, Harvey drowns the city. Next, the Astros win the World Series. And now - Snow!!!

I was captivated by the imagined world created by N.K. Jemisin in this novel, first of a trilogy, as I had not been since I first read Tolkien or Herbert all those many years ago. Jemisin's achievement might even be more remarkable because my imagination has grown somewhat deadened and jaded in the intervening years and it probably takes more to "captivate" it these days.  Jemisin's world is called Stillness but it is anything but still. It is Earth but an Earth riven by constant earthquakes and volcanoes and apocalyptic events. The world still has the four seasons known to us, but when one of these apocalyptic events occurs, it can trigger a Fifth Season which may last years, centuries, millennia and which is a near-extinction event. Imagine a world where George R.R. Martin's winter has come - to stay. Jemisin's world-building is amazing in its detail. There is evidence of past civilizations everywhere in ruined cities and in the "stonelore" that is...

Can we still call it a police procedural if Harry Bosch is no longer with the police? In his last outing, The Burning Room , Harry was suspended from the LAPD on (as usual) a trumped-up complaint. In order to fight that complaint, he would have been tied up in paperwork for months and months and would have had no salary during that time. With a daughter getting ready to start college, that did not seem to be a viable option. So Harry retired. And then filed suit against the LAPD. We encounter him now, several months later, waiting the resolution of the suit and feeling bored and restless.  He's into restoring an old Harley-Davidson motorcycle, which takes up a few minutes of each day, but the rest of the time he's rattling around looking for things to keep his active mind occupied. Mickey Haller to the rescue! Mickey, the Lincoln Lawyer and Harry's half-brother, has a case on which he needs an investigator. His own regular investigator, Dennis "Cisco" Wojciechowsk...

There is a full moon tonight. A supermoon, in fact, the biggest and brightest full moon of the year.  Its traditional name is the Full Cold Moon because it heralds the coming of winter.  If it is a cloudless night where you are, go outside and enjoy the beauty of the "fair Moon, so close and bright." The Moon by William Henry Davies Thy beauty haunts me heart and soul,  Oh, thou fair Moon, so close and bright;  Thy beauty makes me like the child  That cries aloud to own thy light:  The little child that lifts each arm  To press thee to her bosom warm.  Though there are birds that sing this night  With thy white beams across their throats,  Let my deep silence speak for me  More than for them their sweetest notes:  Who worships thee till music fails,  Is greater than thy nightingales.

A roundup of the week's news of birds and the environment : The American Goldfinches returned this week, right on time. This one is perching in a crape myrtle tree. They love the seeds of these trees and will visit them before they start visiting my feeders. *~*~*~* Congress is proposing to seriously weaken the primary law that protects migratory birds on the continent, the Migratory Bird Treaty Act. It is a sop to gas and oil companies that do not want to be held accountable for the bird deaths which they cause. The American Bird Conservancy has a petition which you can sign to oppose the action. *~*~*~* The current administration in Washington is planning to cut Bear Ears National Monument by 85 percent and the Grand Staircase Escalante by 50 percent. They plan to make the announcement next week .  A coalition of conservation groups and tribes, who view Bears Ears as an important ancestral Pueblo site, are prepared to fight the changes in court. *~*~*~* The winter of 2017-18 is...