Three-minute drum solo on a bodhrán

"The Maguires at the launch of their debut album, Little Giants and Other Oxymorons at Temple Bar Tradfest in January 2017.  This clip features a bodhrán solo from Seán Maguire, just 11 years of age at the time, followed by a set of reels from the band."

The instrument was totally new to me. Here are some excerpts from the Wikipedia entry:

Composer Seán Ó Riada declared the bodhrán to be the native drum of the ancient Celts (as did bodhrán maker Paraic McNeela), suggesting that it was possibly used originally for winnowing or wool dying, with a musical history that predated Christianity, native to southwest Ireland... However, according to musician Ronan Nolan, former editor of Irish Music magazine, the bodhrán evolved in the mid-19th century from the tambourine, which can be heard on some Irish music recordings dating back to the 1920s....

The drum is struck either with the bare hand or with a lathe-turned piece of wood called a bone, tipper, beater, stick or cipín.  Tippers were originally fashioned from a double-ended knuckle bone, but are now commonly made from ash, holly, or hickory wood...

...a pitch-varying technique that enabled the bodhrán player to closely follow the cadence and melodic phrasing of the tune being performed. This approach marked a significant technical advancement in bodhrán playing, shifting the instrument from a predominantly rhythmic role toward a more musically responsive one. 

Much more at the link.

A very unusual door

The overall image is a bit distorted from using a wide-angle lens indoors, but it does show that a wooden bar has been fixed diagonally across the lower portion of this door.  Its purpose is totally obscure - until you open the door...

Found in the Awful Taste But Great Execution subreddit, where there is often some totally bizarre material.  The discussion thread for this post has some salient comments re design and building codes.

U.S. map of named highways in 1927

Apologies to the owner of this image, because I saved it in 2007 without noting the source.  This is obviously not a map of all highways, but rather of the ones that by the 1920s had received "names."

Of personal interest to me is #33 on the map - the Yellowstone Trail - which begins in Boston and passes through Minneapolis on its way to Yellowstone Park in Colorado, then continues on to the west coast.  My family home during my high school years was on the Yellowstone Trail, but I had no idea at the time of the significance of the name.  I'm planning a detailed post in the future, and just wanted to leave this here for now.

Addendum: possible source for the map here.

This is not a book you would enjoy reading

I don't remember the context of the post and whether I expressed it in the post or in the comments, but somewhere several weeks ago I offered the opinion that future wars will not be decided by tanks and battleships or heavy bombardment, but rather by drones, autonomous weapons, and cyberattacks.  I cited this book, and this week I finally obtained a copy from the library.

Ted Koppel was a broadcast journalist, best known for hosting the ABC program Nightline for 25 years.  In 2015 he published this book, which details the susceptibility of the United States to failure of critical infrastructure, especially the national electrical power grid.  The opening chapter is an unrelentinlgy grim portrayal of what would happen if a large area of the country lost electrical power for more than a week.  In 2015 his concern was that such an attack could be accomplished through cyberspace, with the malicious actor breaching the poor or nonexistent firewalls around central power stations.  A second consideration was an electromagnetic pulse.  Nowadays a perhaps easier attack could be achieved by someone in the country unleashing a swarm of explosive-carrying drones programmed to attack substations, trunk power lines, and critical office buildings.  

Other chapters detail the inadequate response measures from civil authorities available in 2015 (and likely even less substantial now after the DOGE cost-saving cuts).  Additional chapters include interviews with various levels of "preppers," from ramen-noodle-saving suburbanites to rural underground-bunker-builders.

No practical solutions are offered, so it's basically about 300 pages of Gloom and Doom, which I just briefly browsed through.  It's a good book to know about; it's not a fun book to read.

Extremely detailed study of a painting

I hadn't even finished watching before deciding it was blogworthy, especially when I learned why angel wings resemble watermelon slices.

Lunch with grandma

Cartoon found in the discussion thread of this image:

Reposted from 2020.

"Hilma af Klint" - an awesome movie about a remarkable artist

I was blown away last evening watching this documentary movie from our library.   I have zero background education in art history, and had never heard of this woman.  Apparently I am not alone in that regard.  After watching the movie I went to the Wikipedia entry, where it was explained that "The family surname is 'af Klint', af being a Swedish nobiliary particle."  She was of noble (but not royal) lineage, born in a palace and educated at the Royal Academy in the fine arts, beginning with landscape paintings and botanical illustrations:

When she was about twenty years old, something happened that altered her perception of the world.  Details at the link and in the movie, but basically by the time she was 40, she began pouring out an immense number of totally abstract paintings, such as these (cellphone camera images from the movie on my TV):

"The pictures were painted directly through me, without any preliminary drawings, and with great force. I had no idea what the paintings were supposed to depict; nevertheless I worked swiftly and surely, without changing a single brush stroke."

And the final startling fact is that she was creating this art in the early 1900s (before WWI, for reference, and at the time of my grandparents), and that there was no precedent for this style of artistic expression.  Most textbooks date the onset of abstract art to the works of Kandinsky and Mondrian, who followed (?imitated) her.  This lady's paintings were never exhibited in her lifetime because she was a woman and because the style and content of the images were considered "improper" at that time.

Enough from me.  You already know whether you want to see this movie or not.  It may be streamable for $ on Apple or Prime.  I found the DVD in our South Central Wisconsin library system (a huge system that normally has dozens or hundreds of copies of popular movies had only 2 copies of this one).  It can also be ordered directly from Kino Lorber.   Here is the trailer for the movie:

Tobacco quotas and modern farming

Herewith some passages from "Less is Enough" - an excerpt in Harper's Magazine from the foreword to an upcoming republication of Wendell Berry's The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture.

"...by the work of my father and other good men to preserve the Burley Tobacco Growers Cooperative Association. For about sixty-four years, by a combination of price supports and production controls, that association preserved the lives and livelihoods of small farmers. To limit the production of a product to demand, or to a demand knowingly estimated, is a simple matter. The automobile industry can do it. So can a child. Excessive brain power is not required to “figure it out.” And so it seems odd and even strange that my province and its provinciality produced the only sound agricultural economy that I have known.

Only in agriculture, so far as I know, is this obvious truth ignored, or even overturned on the recommendation of highest authority. In the Seventies, the secretary of agriculture, Earl L. Butz, who supposed that foreign demand would grow without limit, advised American farmers to plow “fencerow to fencerow.” More recently, other experts have advised American farmers to go all out growing soybeans, supposing they will be needed by the Chinese or somebody. Only in agriculture is the rule to produce as much as possible, this silliness to be redeemed if not by the market then by the government. I don’t think this can be dignified or excused by calling it “economics” or “capitalism.” It comes from ignorance or indifference. And it rests on the assumption that farmers deserve their low status because they are in general stupid and their work requires no learning or intelligence. This is the one-crop-by-prescription agriculture invented by the experts and of course recommended by them...

As the experts were seeing it in 1974, the purpose of farming was not the production of the healthiest food at the lowest cost to the land and the people. The purpose was the consumption of agri-industrial products: chemicals, seeds, and machines. The only recognized value was accounted by money...

But in 1974, we had as now, no viable concept of enough. To have some is to need more, and after that, more and more. To have more and more than you need is now a form of common sense, and so we have developed a sort of vogue of billionaires, when the model of citizenship is set by such people as Elon Musk and Donald Trump. To be successful now is to achieve the satisfaction of one’s greed, which of course is enlarged by every additional prospect of satisfaction.

Such was the state of things in 1974, and the state of things is much worse in 2026. We foresee no practical enactment of the concept of enough, but rather submit to the absolute determinism of progress: progress undirected and inevitable. Progress forbids us to stop when we are satisfied. We must go on, adopting the changes of technology, whatever the cost may be to ourselves and our children.

Well said, and I agree 100%.

This essay resonated with me because I used to live in Kentucky (home turf for Berry), and like Berry I had a tobacco allotment.  My first gainful employment as an adult was at the V.A. Medical Center and the University of Kentucky in Lexington.  After a few years of frugal apartment living, I purchased my first home (in that era an $85,000 mortgage got me a nice home with about 10 acres of land in a semi-rural area half an hour from work).  

My land had a history of being a tobacco farm; the photo embedded at the top of this post is a view of my "garage", which was an old tobacco barn.  For those interested, the long drainpipe collected water from the tin roof, which was then directed to an underground cistern to provide my drinking/bathing water.  The drainpipe ends at a bucket on top of the boards covering the cistern, and the bucket had I think some sand to act as a "filter", but every year when the leaves fell onto the barn roof and gutter, various insect larvae would wind up coming out of the faucets in my home.

But back to the tobacco.  Whoever owns the farm owns an "allotment" that allows (but does not require) you to grow X number of pounds of tobacco.  I was working 70-hour weeks, so I did what other farm-squatters did - I drove down to the courthouse once each spring, surveyed the bulletin board and found an offer from someone to sell them my tobacco allotment so they could grow the product.  I don't know how many pounds I was allowed, but the average amount I received each year was about $200.

I don't know if that system still exists in Kentucky or elsewhere, but as Wendell Berry indicates, it was created to control production, because farmers early on realized that overproduction beyond demand just lowers unit costs to the end-user rather than raising farm income.

It is probably no longer possible to live in a "controlled economy," but the principle emphasized by Berry - satisfaction with "enough" - can be applied to a more comprehensive view of lifestyle and life goals.

Company suggests a "courtesy remittance"

I have been a State Farm customer for 60+ years, ever since my first car and apartment.  Recently I've noticed a change in their billing policy.  I used to get statements for the car, house etc a few weeks before they were due.  This week I received correspondence regarding my car insurance, including an enclosed "courtesy remittance slip."  It states quite clearly that this is not a bill, but I can use it to make a payment before the next bill arrives.

My next payment is due in two months.  I ran the numbers.  If I keep my funds in my credit union and wait to pay this in November, I will gain a dollar or two, which is not big money.  But if you multiply this by the approximately 100,000,000 policies that State Farm services, it becomes a useful chunk of change for the corporation.

This is all legal.  It's not predatory or manipulative.  But it adds to my growing dissatisfaction with American corporate business policies.  Am I being unreasonable?

Interesting interview on Bloomberg this morning

Lots of interesting stuff presented during the Bloomberg pre-market "Surveillance" progeram this moning.  Jonathan Ferro commented on the above set of numbers, showing changes year-to-date for three crucial indicators.  Brent crude has risen 80% this year, and the yield on the 10-year treasuries has increased by 85 basis points.   So there has been an energy shock and an interest rate shock, but despite those factors, the broad market measured by the S&P 500 is up double digits.  Some discussion thereafter by Lisa Abramowicz and Annmarie Hordern re how the markets have been resilient because of demonstrably increased profits and the expectations of future growth based on potential contributions of artificial intelligence, into which segment of the market vast quantities of capital have been pouring.  None of this is "new" today but it is startling to see it combined into one graphic.

Even more interesting IMHO was a prolonged interview with Stephen Schork, a a former floor trader on the New York Mercantile Exchange and the editor of an oil market newsletter.  His commentary runs from the 17:30 mark to the 24:00 mark of the program this morning.  I'll try to have the video embed start with his comments; if it doesn't, you can mouse to that point or click this link.

It seems to me that financial markets around the world are still considering the Trump/Netanyahu "not exactly a war" situation to be a temporary matter that will resolve soon.  My crystal ball does not suggest the same.  Strategic petroleum reserves around the world have been depleted severely by the lack of timely shipments from the gulf for most of this year.  China is already resuming purchases of crude after being out of the market during the higher prices.  And now the Houthis are creating massive problems for Saudi Arabia, impairing the east-west pipeline and blocking transport east from the Red Sea, to the extent that I think the Saudis are now telling European countries that they cannot guarantee to provide oil - just when the colder weather starts to hit Europe.

This is a massive clusterfuck, and it's not getting better anytime soon.  

A "fish nest"

Third Place, Conservation Hope. A male white-spotted pufferfish creates an intricate spawning nest in the sand. The fish carefully shapes a two-meter-wide radial pattern using only his fins. Built over several days, this structure and its subtle details reveal the extraordinary effort this small fish invests in reproduction.

This was one of the winning photographs in the Ocean Photographer of the Year competition, from a gallery in The Atlantic.  Photo credit Yuta Shigeno,

Mashup of the movies of 2023

A time-tagged list of the many hundreds of sources for these movie clips is available at the Sleepy Skunk tumblr page.  When I view these rapid-fire mashups, I like to keep the list open in a separate window so I can click back-and-forth to identify movies that might be worth checking out from the library.  And since everything in the mashup is of necessity out of context, I find it useful to turn on the closed captions icon to clarify the dialogue.

The quotation cited at 0:48-0:53 is one of my favorite passages from Charles Dickens (originally in Our Mutual Friend).  The dialogue at 0:23-0:37 is from Past Lives, which I reviewed and rated 4+ last year.  And the Dennis Quaid quotation is laugh-out-loud funny in this context.

$5000 checks offered by a politician in 1935

What do we call this?  Coincidence?  Foreshadowing?

Relevant discussion re Sinclair Lewis' writing and modern politics, with a hat tip to an anonymous reader.

Modified manhole cover, Copenhagen

United States "Space Force" uniforms

Trump stated that the new uniforms were inspired by "Starship Troopers" uniforms.  But the film, based on the classic Robert A. Heinlein novel, can be viewed as a warning against fascism, militarism, and nationalism.  And the parallel to these uniforms is striking:

Images via Comic Sands.

"Rosie the Rock Snake"

Today while on a butterfly hike at Badger Prairie County Park (Verona, Wisconsin) I encountered Rosie the Rock Snake.  This was clearly a community art project, presumably initiated by a local teacher, parent, or scout leader.  I was delighted to see that it has apparently not been subject to thievery or vandalism (remembering that Wisconsin is a state where local farmers leave corn on the cob, pumpkins, and other produce out by the road and invite passers-by to take the veggies and leave some money).  I was also impressed by the quality of the painting on many of the rocks.

Locals who would like to see the artwork just need to find your way to the highest point in the park (where the old water tower used to be).  If you plan to do so, consider bringing a painted rock...

I would also note that today the Monarch butterflies were literally "too numerous to count" because this is the migratory season and the Madison area is under the flyway for legions of Monarchs heading south from areas up north.

(This sort of reminded me of the "ditch ducks" in northern Minnesota)

Aurora over an Icelandic waterfall

An Astronomy Photo of the Day, from NASA.

Dragonflies migrate long distances

How do I get to be 80+ years old and not know basic facts about nature?  This week I learned that dragonflies migrate as far as some birds and Monarch butterflies.  I shared my summers with dragonflies up at Leech Lake in northern Minnesota, finding the nymphs and their empty shells on the shore and welcoming their emergence as mosquito-catchers.  But I didn't know they migrated.

When it’s back-to-school time, North Shore naturalists such as Joe Walewski at Wolf Ridge Environmental Learning Center in Finland, Minn., know to watch the skies for green darners and other dragonflies soaring overhead on their fall migration journey...

Like southbound birds that funnel along the North Shore to avoid Lake Superior’s open water, dragonflies also pass by Hawk Ridge Bird Observatory in Duluth — especially on sunny fair-weather days between late August and early September.

Last year, Sept. 1 was clearly a favorite day to fly as Hawk Ridge counted 57,000 dragonflies. On Thursday, they counted 35,000, said Sean McLaughlin, lead counter for Hawk Ridge...

Counters do estimates by 10s or even hundreds at a time when dragonflies are moving through quickly. Sometimes they’re dense enough to show up on radar like a rain cloud over Duluth.

At 3 inches or longer, green darner dragonflies are usually the most numerous and easy to spot, with their vivid green thoraxes and bright blue abdomens. They’ve also been the most studied. Scientists have put tiny trackers on their bodies and learned the insects can cover 70 to 90 miles a day on their way to Gulf states or as far as Panama.

More than a dozen species of dragonflies migrate, including white-faced and autumn meadowhawks, wandering gliders, black saddlebags and spot-winged gliders...

Like monarch butterflies, migrating dragonflies only travel one way. They mate and lay eggs at the end of their journeys. Eggs hatch into nymphs in both southern and northern states, overwintering in ponds and waterways until they emerge onto land with wings to follow seasonal migration routes.

You learn something every day.  Photo via Wikipedia.

"Narluga" explained

I didn't know this creature existed.  Saw it mentioned recently and had to go back to a 2019 article by Ed Yong in The Atlantic for an explanation.

Belugas and narwhals are the same size, share the same Arctic waters, and are more closely related to each other than to any other species. Individuals from both species have been found swimming among each other’s pods...

By analyzing DNA extracted from one of the creature’s teeth, a team led by Eline Lorenzen from the Natural History Museum of Denmark showed that it was a male, born to a beluga father and a narwhal mother. Most of its DNA was a half-and-half mix between the two species, but its mitochondrial DNA—a secondary set that animals inherit only from their mothers—was entirely narwhal. “A while back, we presented our findings at a conference of 150 people who are very into belugas, and you could hear a pin drop,” Lorenzen says. “None of them were familiar with hybrids between those two species.”

Lots more science at the link, but this paragraph is particularly interesting:

A brief digression: When naming hybrid animals, patriarchal conventions dictate that the father’s species comes first in the portmanteau. A cub born to a male polar bear and a female grizzly is a pizzly, but one with a grizzly dad and a polar mom is a grolar. So, technically, the skull from Larsen’s toolshed is a belwhal, not a narluga. But the latter name might well stick because it’s been called that for decades and, as Lorenzen says, narluga just sounds better.

So now I know what a pizzly and a grolar are.  You learn something every day.

"C'mon, C'mon" - Joaquin Phoenix reads "Star Child"

Have I not reviewed this movie before?  I thought I must have, but this week after seeing the above trailer on Facebook I looked for my blog post about it and found nothing.  I saw the movie back in 2022 and rated it 4+ (worth watching again).  Haven't done so yet, but after seeing the trailer, I've requested the "Star Child" book from the library.

The sound on the trailer is a bit muffled; viewing closed captions may be helpful.

"Reawakening"

"Reawakening" is a remarkably well-performed movie.  Jared Harris and Juliet Stevenson portray a British couple whose 14-year old daughter left home and disappeared 10 years ago, presumably because of problems related to recreational drug abuse; now a 24-year-old young woman arrives at their home.  

That is the entire "plot."  There are no special effects, no nudity, no explosions or car chases.  For about 75 minutes the film takes a deep dive into personal tragedies, grief, obsession, and coping mechanisms.  The final 20 minutes resolves the matter in what to my mind is an ultimately satisfying way.  

This is not a "happy" movie, not a fun movie to watch as these characters struggle with their emotions.  It is instead an opportunity for the viewer to watch skilled actors at the peaks of their careers.  I did not record it as a 4+ movie (one to watch again), but it clearly rates 3.5 on my scale (well worth the time, and worth recommending).  (I think the term "thriller" in this trailer image is a misnomer.  This is a conventional drama).

Readers' viewpoints are invited in the Comments.

Condom made from a sheep's appendix

As reported by The Guardian:

A 200-year-old illustrated condom will go on display with Dutch golden age masters in Amsterdam this week, after the 19th-century “luxury souvenir” became the first-ever contraceptive sheath to be added to the Rijksmuseum’s art collection.

The condom, which was probably made of a sheep’s appendix circa 1830, is thought to have come from an upmarket brothel in France, most likely in Paris. It features an erotic etching depicting a partially undressed nun pointing at the erect genitals of three clergymen, as well as the phrase Voila, mon choix (“There, that’s my choice”).

The Rijksmuseum curator Joyce Zelen said the composition of the etching deliberately alluded to the Greek myth of the Judgment of Paris, in which a Trojan prince is asked to pick the most beautiful of three goddesses. “So we believe that whoever acquired the condom would have been fairly sophisticated and well-educated,” she said.

Minneapolis has a "Buckthorn Removal Singles Club"

When we moved into our present home 25+ years ago, I spent the better part of three summers grubbing out invasive buckthorn from the small woods behind the backyard (in subsequent years, native wildflowers have emerged in the same soil after the canopy-creating and water-stealing rascals were removed).  I later volunteered at the University of Wisconin Arboretum nearby for several buckthorn-removing projects.  So it makes perfect sense to me to see that in Minnesota, this worthwhile and productive activity has been turned into a social activity.

Cooke had recently noticed buckthorn overtaking a local park. It reminded him of how dating apps have invaded the social scene, choking out more natural methods of partnering up. What if he could entice singles to do habitat restoration with the prospect of meeting other eco-minded eligibles?..

The BRSC’s collectivist concept resonated in a post-ICE-resistance Minneapolis. It paired fun with education and do-gooderism, like other quirky, homegrown social events such as the Great Northern festival and the Wedge Cat Tour. Unlike bars and clubs, prowling with apex predators, the BRSC was a safe space where participants might unashamedly tuck pants into socks.

More information at the Minnesota Star Tribune (photo credit Richard Tsong-Taatarii)

"The Grab" is a quite remarkable documentary

This is an actual documentary about the real world, not a fictional docudrama about an alternative earth.  The trailer is fairly explanatory.  For those who want a single sentence rather than a 2-minute watch, this is about ultra-rich people and government entites gaining control of the food and water resources of the world.  

The scary part: the maneuvers being employed worldwide are legal.  For example, someone buys large holdings of land in Arizona, then puts down wells capable of withdrawing water from the aquifer at a rate of thousands of gallons per minute, uses the water to grow a crop, and send the crop to a waterless country elsewhere.  Arizona has no law forbidding the taking and using of their aquifer.  People want cropland - they go to Africa, bribe or strong-arm a tribal elder to take land that has since forever been held in common by the peoples there, and install megafarms, displacing the indigenous inhabitants to the sprawling cities.

Not fun to watch.

Mr. Beaver's advice

"But in general, take my advice, when you meet anything that's going to be human and isn't yet, or used to be human once and isn't now, or ought to be human and isn't, you keep your eyes on it and feel for your hatchet."

The passage is from Chapter 8 in C. S. Lewis' The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe.  It has been cited frequently in recent years in relation to the development of artificial intelligence.  I wondered about the original intent in 1950 in a book written for children, and I found this commentary in a literary stackexchange in 2017:

But what does makes sense is that Lewis is foreshadowing the central role that humans play in the history and salvation of Narnia. Remember that there is a prophecy that Jadis' power will be broken when two sons of Adam and two daughters of Eve sit on the thrones of Cair Paravel. Only a human being can validly rule Narnia. By stressing that the witch has no human in her, Mr. Beaver is pointing out that she is not the true ruler of Narnia. That which looks human and is not is a pretender to the throne. Only a true human can occupy it.

That idea of the imposter, the thing that looks human and isn't runs through much of Lewis's work. It is there in Men Without Chests (part of The Abolition of Man) and it is there in Out of the Silent Planet where Ransom tries to explain to the Malacandrans what is wrong with Weston. It is there in The Last Battle, where Shift dresses as human and gets Puzzle to dress as Aslan.

From a theological point of view, Satan is the great imposter. Christ is the new man: that which it truly and fully human.

So no, this is not about the uncanny valley, it is about imposters, those things that set themselves up as good and true, as rightful rulers, but are not.

That was then, this is now.  I'm going to apply the rule to AI.

The sinuous journey of a "leaf miner"

An outstanding example, nicely documented in Marcy O'Connor's absolutely outstanding Prairie Haven blog.  This is one of the photos for August 2026.  I encourage readers who are interested in the natural world to explore Prairie Haven, both in the monthly photo collections, and in the comprehensive listings of the "farm inventory" (wildlife) seen at this location over the past 26 years as it has been "unfarmed" back to its natural state.  (The "people" section includes a photo with me in 2016 for a butterfly survey)

Tater tot hotdish - quintessential Minnesota cuisine

Water strider

Here's a 3-minute newscast report on the Minneapolis Manhole Art Cover Project.