"... Then, when I got to the [grocery] store, I heard the woman who waited on customers say to the man ahead of me, "Hi, honey. God, you're beautiful today," and this struck me as untrue, because I had seen the man quite clearly. After he left I said to her, "What made you say that to that man? He was one of the ugliest men I have ever seen," and she replied, "That was my husband."
"She shared a love of plants with her parents and siblings. To friends, she sent bouquets, and to some of her numerous correspondents - over one thousand of her letters have been found - pressed flowers."She collected wildflowers, walking with her dog, Carlo. She studied botany at Amherst Academy and Mount Holyoke*. She tended both a small glass conservatory attached to the front of the house and a long flower garden sloping down the spacious east side of the grounds. In winter, she forced hyacinth bulbs and in summer she knelt on a red blanket in her flower borders, performing horticulture's familiar rituals.
"When she was old enough to choose, she abstained from the services held in the pillared Congregational church across from Amherst College. She was, as she put it, a dissenter. She practiced her rites in the garden:
Some keep the Sabbath going to Church -I keep it, staying at Home -With a Bobolink for a Chorister -And an Orchard, for a Dome.Some keep the Sabbath in Surplice -I, just wear my Wings -And instead of tolling the Bell, for Church -Our little Sexton - sings."God" preaches a noted Clergyman -And the sermon is never long,So instead of getting to Heaven, at last -I'm going, all along." (#236, 1861)
Barley and Niffler are just two of the many conservation-detection dogs now employed by the growing wind industry. As turbines proliferate across the country, understanding their effect on wildlife is more important than ever. In the early days of turbines, scientists had focused on the danger they posed to eagles and other raptors—but it turns out those big bird carcasses were simply the easiest for humans to spot.“Truth was, people are terrible at finding bats and small birds,” says K. Shawn Smallwood, a biologist who has worked on wind farms in California. Smallwood told me he was initially skeptical of using dogs to monitor turbine fatalities, but the data simply blew him away. In one study he conducted, dogs found 96 percent of dead bats, whereas humans found just 6 percent...Estimates suggest that turbines in North America kill 600,000 to 949,000 bats and 140,000 to 679,000 birds a year. Dogs are, by far, the quickest and most effective way to find them.The best dogs for this work are misfits of the pet world. They have to be utterly obsessed with play—to a point that most humans would find exhausting. “All the dogs that we have in our program, they're either rescues … or they’re an owner surrender, where they just say they’re out of options and even a shelter won’t take them,” says Heath Smith, the director of Rogue Detection Teams, a conservation-detection-dog company. The dogs have too much energy and an “insatiable drive to play fetch,” which is not great for a family pet but very useful for motivating a dog to find birds or bats so they can get their favorite toy as a reward...Most bat deaths occur during fall migrations, and they are concentrated among three species: eastern red bats, silver-haired bats, and hoary bats. These bats all roost in trees, and they seem attracted to wind turbines, possibly because the structures look like “the biggest, tallest trees in the landscape...Scientists have since found that idling turbines under specific conditions—at night, during the bats’ fall migration, and when the wind speed is below 6.5 meters per second (about 14.5 mph)—can sharply curb bat deaths; a promising set of studies also suggests that ultrasonic white noise can keep bats away.
Panther Cave is a rock shelter in Seminole Canyon State Park, Texas, named for a dramatic leaping cat that is the largest of its many pictographs. Copious overpainting indicates the site was used as a canvas by generations of rock painters. Cats, humans wearing headdresses, abstract figures from six inches to more than 10 feet high decorate the rock face.
The images are predominantly in the Pecos River and Red Linear styles and date back about 4,000 years. Pecos River Style is the oldest, starting around 5000 years ago. Its iconography features monumental polychrome designs of zoomorphic figures and of anthropomorphic figures called shamans. Pecos River art is thought to have had ritual significance, perhaps having been painted for ceremonial religious purposes. Red Linear style is characterized by small red stick figures engaged in a variety of shared activities like hunting, fighting, sex and childbirth. Red Linear figures often incorporated the older large Pecos River animal figures in their scenes...
Acutely aware of the precarious situation Panther Cave and other rock art sites find themselves in, the SHUMLA Archeological Research and Education Center launched the Lower Pecos Rock Art Recording and Preservation Project in 2009... They used 3D modeling software to showcase the natural contours and shape of the cave, then used color enhancement to highlight the stunning complexity of figures that are not clear to the naked eye. The finished product is a riot of color, giving viewers whole new insight into the pictographs that layer the site.
"According to scholar Carolyn Boyd, the mystic artists of these canyons likely conceived many of their visions after consuming potent hallucinogenic plants. "I do think that what they are painting are experiences they had under the influence of these plants..."Often called "the peyote tribe," the Huichol had long resisted Christianity, holding true to their shamanic traditions... Each fall, Huichol shamans led a pilgrimage [to the Chihuahuan desert] to collect a small, carrot-shaped cactus: the powerful hallucinogen peyote... To honor this divinity, pilgrims fastened some of the cacti to deer antlers carried along on the quest...Certainly the artists painted antlered human forms repeatedly on their rock-shelter walls. And archaeological evidence suggested they knew peyote well. While excavating a series of high, painted caves overlooking the Rio Grande... they found scatterings of peyote, which grows only in isolated spots in the region, along the sandy floors. When radiocarbon-dated recently, two of these specimens proved to be 7,000 years old - the oldest known peyote in the world...Laced with mescaline, the plant triggers visions both nightmarish and beautiful, and fosters a strong sense of disembodiment. "No part of my body was subject to the laws of gravitation," reported one experimental subject - a German physician - in the 1920s. "Extremely fantastic figures appeared before my eyes..."In Boyd's view, the peyote murals of the region now stand as the world's oldest known record of hallucinogen-inspired altered states.
"To maintain a supple mind, the gerontologist Marios Kyriazis, who is in his sixties and heads the British Longevity Society, reads the newspaper upside down, and whenever that becomes too easy, he reads the newspaper upside down and reflected in a mirror. Think of it as an alternative to Sudoku."
"Their relationship hit a bump in the road, not the low, graceful kind of bump, reminiscent of a child's choo-choo-train-themed roller coaster, rather the kind of tall, narrow speed-bump that, if a school bus ran over it, would cause even a fat kid to fly up and bang his head on the ceiling." --Michael Reade, Durham, NC"On a lovely day during one of the finest Indian summers anyone could remember--a season the Germans call "old wives' summer," obviously never having had Native Americans to name things after, but plenty of old wives, and "Indian summer" in German would refer to the natives of India in any case, which would make even less sense than the current naming system--on such a day, however named, John Baxter fell in the creek and drowned." --Deanna Stewart, Heidelberg, Germany
"The countdown had stalled at T minus 69 seconds when Desiree, the first female ape to go up in space, winked at me slyly and pouted her thick, rubbery lips unmistakably--the first of many such advances during what would prove to be the longest, and most memorable, space voyage of my career." --Martha Simpson, Glastonbury, Connecticut
"Brigid O’Hanion was the fairest flower of Southern womanhood, and Lt. Lance Beauregard was almost blind with lust for her, but after he slipped off her hoop skirt, unbuttoned her lacy blouse, untied her incredibly tight corset, dove beneath the rustling crinoline petticoats, and laboriously inched off her pantalets, he realized his mood had shifted and he now wondered if there was still some cold ham on the sideboard downstairs." -- Randall Card, Bellingham, WA"One time at the hoagie shop the actress Ms. O'Hara asked what the tiny pimiento-stuffed thing in my cheddar-bread sandwich was and I had to respond: "Wee olive in a yellow sub, Maureen." -- Fr. Jerry Kopacek, Elma, IA
With a tip of the blogging cap to Miss Cellania at Neatorama for her annual reminder about the competition.
Entire channels of the Mississippi River are caked dry. Rocks, riverbeds and islands of the St. Croix and Minnesota rivers are visible for the first time in decades. Dozens of streams are at their lowest recorded levels since at least 1988, or even the Dust Bowl.On Wednesday, the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources (DNR) put much of the state in a "restricted phase" as the drought continues to get worse. That means water utilities and suppliers will need to cut down the total amount of water used to no more than 25% above what they used in January.Parts of Minnesota have even slipped into the most severe level — "exceptional drought" — for the first time since the U.S. Drought Monitor began ranking droughts by four levels of intensity. The ranking system wasn't around during the Dust Bowl, but meteorologists believe that and the drought of 1988 might be the only time Minnesota has been this dry...Mallards and gulls are taking over newly formed islands in some of the state's largest rivers. Great blue herons are stalking desperate fish corralled into smaller and smaller pools for some of the easiest meals the birds will likely find in the wild...Wolves could fare well if the drought starts stressing or weakening deer to the point where they become more vulnerable. One thing that is almost certain is that bear hunters will probably be very successful this fall, Stark said.As berries, acorns and hazelnuts becomes less available, bears become more bold in going after bait piles set by hunters...About 60% of the state's streams and rivers are flowing at or near record lows, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. The flow of the Vermillion River near Voyageurs National Park was down to a trickle Wednesday, crawling at just 10 cubic feet per second — the lowest level recorded since measurements began in the 1990s, said Eric Wakeman, supervisory hydrologic technician for the Geological Survey."Usually it's flowing at about 310 cubic feet per second," he said. "What we're seeing now in some of these areas, especially central Minnesota and in the northeast, are fairly unprecedented."
It's also hot up there. I spoke today to an old friend who has lived in the Walker area for 25 years; he has never seen a summer this hot and dry. In an average year air temperatures at Leech Lake reach 90 degrees about one day per summer; so far this year the temp has reached 90 or above twenty times.
This brought to mind a book I read in my early teens about a girl and her younger brother in some dystopian future where everything is dry, and they go searching for a waterfall on a postcard their parents left them, but when they get there, it's just a little trickle. I am hoping one of your readers knows what book I'm talking about and can refresh my memory on its title.I'm stumped (and I like dystopian future stories), but perhaps somewhere out there is an omnivorous reader or an astute librarian who will know...
If there’s a plant perfectly suited to outcompete the farmers, researchers and chemical companies that collectively define industrial American agriculture, it’s Palmer amaranth. This pigweed (a catchall term that includes some plants in the amaranth family) can re-root itself after being yanked from the ground. It can grow three inches a day. And it has evolved resistance to many of the most common weed killers...The plant in his hands was a Palmer amaranth descendant that had demonstrated resistance to 2,4-D, one of two active ingredients in compounds used to defoliate forests during the Vietnam War...Superweeds — that is, weeds that have evolved characteristics that make them more difficult to control as a result of repeatedly using the same management tactic — are rapidly overtaking American commodity farms, and Palmer amaranth is their king. Scientists have identified a population of Palmer amaranth that can tolerate being sprayed with six different herbicides (though not all at once), and they continue to discover new resistances. By now, it’s clear that weeds are evolving faster than companies are developing new weed killers...It’s hard to estimate exactly how much damage has already been wrought by herbicide resistance; the weeds are gaining ground faster than scientists can survey them...Palmer amaranth benefits from incredible genetic diversity. It mates sexually (obligate outcrossing, in biology-speak), and female plants produce hundreds of thousands of seeds each year. The plants that sprouted with random mutations that inadvertently equipped them to survive showers of herbicide lived to reproduce with one another. Then, once applications of Roundup annihilated all the weeds in a field except the resistant Palmer amaranth, the pigweed could spread without competition...Ultimately, Roundup was no match for the pigweed’s evolutionary vitality. Roundup-resistant Palmer amaranth populations quickly spread through the South, then moved north, hidden at times in cottonseed hulls used for animal feed. Once consumed, the tiny seeds passed intact through the digestive systems of the cows that ate them. Farmers who sprayed the contaminated cow manure on their fields — a common practice, as a cheap form of fertilizer — unwittingly assisted the weed’s spread. Palmer amaranth, the ultimate opportunist, now grows in at least 39 states.
To understand why [sulcatas are popular], you just have to look at a baby sulcata. It’s tough to overstate how cute they are. They fit right in the palm of your hand, their pinkie nail–sized heads swiveling around on a constant search for food. When you approach a tank full of babies, they bumble over on toothpick claws to crowd around your hand, eager for a bite of lettuce or a fruit treat.
Wherever you live in the United States, and whatever the climate, you can buy your very own sulcata in a pet store for between $50 and $200. Stick it in a fish tank with a UV light and some lettuce, and you’re good to go. According to the 9,250-person-strong Facebook group Sulcata Tortoises, the animals are “no trouble at all.”But they don’t stay small for long. Properly cared for, males can grow to over 200 pounds, females around half that. Like “teacup” pig buyers, prospective sulcata owners are often burdened with significant misinformation. Pet stores sometimes tell customers that the animals stay small if kept in a small tank (they don’t), that they can eat anything vegetarian (they can’t), and that if they get too big, a zoo will take them (a myth that zookeepers are sick of debunking). Even kept with the best intentions, sulcatas might develop deformed shells, or tear up drywall and backyards.“They’re just pretty destructive. Any place you see a wall, there’s some reason with a sulcata,” Susan Tellem, American Tortoise Rescue’s co-founder, explained as she showed me a deep hole Tank had dug recently. Even sliding doors can be a problem: Tellem had to put up a wall between Tank and the house when he figured out how to slide the glass and screen doors open with his legs to get inside.
"It’s worth recalling that in the early days of the pandemic, Republican COVID denialism began as a largely reflexive partisan instinct. President Trump was too upset by the emergence of a pandemic, at a moment when he believed he had seized a decisive campaign advantage, to admit that he was facing a serious crisis that required action. And so he began insisting the virus would disappear quickly...The Republicans’ original premise for these beliefs was that Democrats were hyping up the pandemic as a pretext to shut down the economy and thereby to harm his chances of reelection... That entire conspiracy theory has collapsed. And yet the beliefs it spawned — that masks and vaccines were unnecessary — have remained in place...Until COVID came along, not even doctrinaire libertarians opposed government vaccine mandates. For decades, institutions like the military and schools have routinely required a long list of vaccines. HuffPost’s Jonathan Cohn cites the works of libertarian writers such as Jessica Flanigan (“A Defense of Compulsory Vaccination,” 2013), Jason Brennan (“A Libertarian Case for Mandatory Vaccination,” 2018), and Ilya Somin, all of whom supported vaccine mandates before COVID existed.But even if you were such a libertarian extremist that you opposed vaccine requirements, there’s no conceivable justification for banning private business from requiring vaccinations. When Cruz insists, “No one should force anyone to take the vaccine — including the federal government or an employer,” he is trampling on property rights and freedom of association, principles a small-government conservative like Cruz usually defends fanatically...There is no clever plan here — just politicians so desperate to cater to the pathologies of their base that they chase one another to adopt the most politically toxic and socially hazardous position available. Donald Trump’s heirs have tested the political marketplace and arrived at a morbid conclusion: His supporters would rather die than admit they were wrong."
To say what should be obvious, getting vaccinated and wearing a mask in public spaces aren’t “personal choices.” When you reject your shots or refuse to mask up, you’re increasing my risk of catching a potentially deadly or disabling disease, and also helping to perpetuate the social and economic costs of the pandemic. In a very real sense, the irresponsible minority is depriving the rest of us of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.Furthermore, to say something that should also be obvious, those claiming that their opposition to public health measures is about protecting “freedom” aren’t being honest.Most notably, ever since masks became a front in the culture war it has been clear that many opponents of mask mandates aren’t merely demanding the right to go unmasked themselves — they want to stop others from acting responsibly. Tucker Carlson has called on his viewers to confront people they encounter who are wearing masks, and there have been scattered reports of violent attacks on mask-wearers.Also, it’s striking how quickly supposed conservative principles have been abandoned wherever honoring those principles would help rather than hurt attempts to contain the pandemic.For decades, conservatives have insisted that business owners should have the right to do as they please — to hire and fire at will, to deny service to whomever they choose. Yet here we have Abbott threatening to pull the liquor licenses of restaurants that ask for proof of vaccination, even as Texas runs out of I.C.U. beds.Conservatives have also championed local control of education — except, it turns out, when school districts want to protect children with mask rules, in which case MAGA governors want to seize control and cut off their funding...So it’s time to stop being diffident and call out destructive behavior for what it is. Doing so may make some people feel that they’re being looked down on. But you know what? Your feelings don’t give you the right to ruin other people’s lives.
