The Nature of Things

I love the imagery which Billy Collins employs in this poem to express the difficulty of writing literature, of expressing a complete and comprehensible thought. He likens it to a "lone traveler heading into a blizzard at midnight." As he struggles against the elements, he thinks of all the things that it would be easier for him to do. And yet he persists until at dawn a smile will appear in his "beard of icicles" and the lone traveler will, at last, be able to express a complete thought. Winter Syntax by Billy Collins A sentence starts out like a lone traveler heading into a blizzard at midnight, tilting into the wind, one arm shielding his face, the tails of his thin coat flapping behind him. There are easier ways of making sense, the connoisseurship of gesture, for example. You hold a girl's face in your hands like a vase. You lift a gun from the glove compartment and toss it out the window into the desert heat. These cool moments are blazing with silence. Th...

A roundup of the week's news of birds and the environment : Early in the week, my birdfeeders looked something like this. They were covered in finches - here American Goldfinches and Pine Siskins , but also Purple Finches.  By the end of the week, most of these visitors had moved on. We had temperatures in the 70s and 80s F for much of the week so maybe that convinced the birds that it was time to migrate north toward their breeding grounds. *~*~*~* The bulldozers have moved in at the National Butterfly Center in Mission, Texas, and construction of a wall there is expected to begin soon. The Center is still fighting to stop the destruction of the butterfly habitat and has requested an emergency restraining order . Construction of the wall threatens the region's growing ecotourism industry and most local people oppose it . *~*~*~* NASA scientists announced this week that it is now official that 2018 was the planet's fourth hottest in nearly 140 years of record-keeping an...

Five years ago this month, I read The Sixth Extinction by Elizabeth Kolbert. It's a book whose theme has stayed with me in the five years since. Today there is even more evidence that Earth is undergoing the sixth extinction (that we know about) in the history of the planet and, in fact, that that extinction is snowballing. It is not a comforting thought. ~~~ Thursday, February 27, 2014 The Sixth Extinction by Elizabeth Kolbert: A review The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History  by  Elizabeth Kolbert My rating:  4 of 5 stars "In pushing other species to extinction, humanity is busy sawing off the limb on which it perches."                                  - Stanford ecologist Paul Ehrlich As far as science has been able to determine, there have been five mass extinctions of life on Earth in the history of our planet. The first of these occurred at the end of the Ordovician period of th...

The garden in winter can appear to be a pretty barren place, but as Lucy Maud Montgomery surely understood...  " Safe beneath the snowdrifts lie   Rainbow buds of by-and-by"  and  " Though the winds are keen and chill Roses' hearts are beating still"  The barrenness is an illusion; in fact, the garden in winter is full of life. And dreams. The Garden in Winter by Lucy Maud Montgomery Frosty-white and cold it lies  Underneath the fretful skies;  Snowflakes flutter where the red  Banners of the poppies spread,  And the drifts are wide and deep  Where the lilies fell asleep.  But the sunsets o'er it throw  Flame-like splendor, lucent glow,  And the moonshine makes it gleam  Like a wonderland of dream,  And the sharp winds all the day  Pipe and whistle shrilly gay.  Safe beneath the snowdrifts lie  Rainbow buds of by-and-by;  In the long, sweet days of spring  Music of bluebells shall ring,...

A roundup of the week's news of birds and the environment : Image from ABC. The American Bird Conservancy's Bird of the Week is the Great Horned Owl , an adaptable bird that can be found in a wide variety of habitats from tropical and boreal forests to deserts. There are estimated to be around 3.9 million of these hunters, sometimes called "winged tigers" or "tigers of the air," in the United States and Canada. They are quite active and vociferous at this time of year. There has been one serenading me from the live oaks in my front yard during the nights of this week. It's always a thrill to hear those deep, booming calls. *~*~*~* Climate scientists have been warning us for years that the heating up of the planet will create more extreme weather conditions. We've had a prime example of that this week with the polar vortex creating record cold in the Midwest, while on the flip side of the planet, in the southern hemisphere, record heat continues to...

This might be my favorite Flavia de Luce novel so far. I'm not sure it is the best; it may just be that I was in the mood for it. You know how it is when a book hits exactly the right spot at the right time. It makes for a very pleasurable reading experience. Flavia is now a teenager and an orphan. Her beloved father had died just six months previously after her mother, the sainted Harriet, had died when she was only a baby.  Harriet had left the family home, which had come down from her side of the family, to Flavia, the youngest of her three daughters. Now that her father is gone, a decision must be made as to what to do with that home. Flavia's bossy aunt thinks it should be sold. But it's the only home Flavia knows. How can she sell it? Besides, what would happen to the loyal family factotum, Dogger, and the family cook? And, of course, her sisters Feely (Ophelia) and Daffy (Daphne)? Well, Feely is about to marry her fiance, Dieter, so that's her sorted. Their we...