Good Loving Woman
You can scroll the shelf using ← and → keys
September 24, 2014
September 1, 2014
First Rose-breasted Grosbeak Spotting Today on Catsilk Mountain!
May 6, 2014
WOWZA! He’s landed one day later than last year’s May 5th arrival!
What a world . . .
Rose-breasted Grosbeak Trans-Gulf Migration
- Can be seen throughout the East in April-May
- Settled and breeding by June
- Fall migration late August to October for eastern Mexico and Central America; can travel as far as South America, spreading throughout Colombia, Venezuela, and Ecuador
- “The courtship of the rose-breasted grosbeak, or its culmination, is a quiet, dignified act. There is none of the hot pursuit of the bobolink with almost a rape at the end. The two grosbeaks appear truly fond of each other. (A.C. Bent)” PHEUCTICUS LUDOVICIANUS (Linnaeus)
Surprised by Evening (Robert Bly)
April 6, 2014
Surprised by Evening
by Robert Bly
There is unknown dust that is near us,
Waves breaking on shores just over the hill,
Trees full of birds that we have never seen,
Nets drawn down with dark fish.
The evening arrives; we look up and it is there,
It has come through the nets of the stars,
Through the tissues of the grass,
Walking quietly over the asylums of the waters.
The day shall never end, we think:
We have hair that seems born for the daylight;
But, at last, the quiet waters of the night will rise,
And our skin shall see far off, as it does underwater.
“Surprised by Evening” by Robert Bly from Eating the Honey of Words. © Harper Collins, 1999.
Today is National Grammar Day! Try the quiz:
http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/iv-drip/the-grammar-quiz-9168431.html
March 4, 2014
“Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo”
February 26, 2014
… is a grammatically correct sentence in American English.
The sentence’s meaning becomes clearer when it’s understood that it uses three meanings of the word buffalo: the city of Buffalo, New York, the somewhat uncommon verb “to buffalo” (meaning “to bully or intimidate”), as well as the animal buffalo. When the punctuation and grammar are expanded, the sentence could read as follows: “Buffalo buffalo that Buffalo buffalo buffalo, buffalo Buffalo buffalo.” The meaning becomes even clearer when synonyms are used:
“Buffalo bison that other Buffalo bison bully, themselves bully Buffalo bison.”
Annie Senghas is given credit as the inventor of the sentence.
The Leonid meteor shower, named for the constellation Leo, occurs from November 10th to November 20th each year, peaking around November 17th and 18th. Typically one of the most exciting showers of the year, the Leonids produce an average of 20 to 30 meteors per hour.
November 16, 2013
— 1 Comment
The Leonids are a fast moving stream which encounter the path of Earth and impact at 72 km/s.Larger Leonids which are about 10 mm across have a mass of half a gram and are known for generating bright (apparent magnitude -1.5) meteors.An annual Leonid shower may deposit 12 or 13 tons of particles across the entire planet.
The Leonids are famous because their meteor showers, or storms, can be among the most spectacular. Because of the superlative storm of 1833 and the recent developments in scientific thought of the time (see for example the identification of Halley’s Comet) the Leonids have had a major effect on the development of the scientific study of meteors which had previously been thought to be atmospheric phenomena. The meteor storm of 1833 was of truly superlative strength. One estimate is over one hundred thousand meteors an hour,but another, done as the storm abated, estimated in excess of two hundred thousand meteors an hourover the entire region of North America east of the Rocky Mountains. It was marked by the Native Americans,abolitionists like Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass and slave-ownersand others.
Unfortunately for sky watchers, the full Moon on the night of the 17th will make this year’s shower difficult to impossible to see. If you want to try anyway, look to the southeast in the hours just before dawn.
Thomas Hood, English poet (1799 – 1845)
No shade, no shine, no butterflies, no bees, no fruits, no flowers, no leaves, no birds–NOvember!
November 6, 2013
— 1 Comment
America, why are your libraries full of tears?
August 23, 2013
On this day in 1927 Nicola Sacco, a shoemaker, and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, a fish seller, were executed in Boston. The two men, Italian immigrants, had been convicted of the murders of Frederick Parmenter and Alessandro Berardelli, employees of the Slater & Morrill Shoe Company. Seven years earlier, April 15, 1920 at 3:00 in the afternoon, in the broad daylight of South Braintree, Massachusetts, two thieves shot and robbed a paymaster and his guard of the nearly $16,000 payroll they were carrying.
Seven shots were fired. The killers picked up the two boxes containing the money, leaped into a car containing several other men, and sped away. The whole event took less than a minute.
A few weeks later, Sacco and Vanzetti were arrested on a streetcar by a policeman who thought they looked suspicious. Both men were armed, and they lied to police about their guns. That September, Sacco and Vanzetti were indicted for the murders. The trial began the following spring in Dedham, Massachusetts. The case was heard by Judge Webster Thayer, who called the two men “anarchists.” On the evening of July 14, the jury returned its verdict: both men were declared guilty of murder in the first degree.
Neither Sacco nor Vanzetti had a criminal record, nor were they communists. But they were known to the authorities as militant radicals. They were politically active and had been involved in the anti-war movement. Their arrest took place just after the Red Scare of 1919, a time of fear and political unrest.
Though Sacco and Vanzetti believed themselves to be victims of prejudice, Judge Thayer denied all motions for a new trial. Vanzetti said in his last speech to Judge Thayer: “My conviction is that I have suffered for things that I am guilty of. I am suffering because I am a radical, and indeed I am a radical; I have suffered because I was an Italian, and indeed I am an Italian …”
Many well-known artists and intellectuals — including H.G. Wells, Upton Sinclair, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Bertrand Russell, Dorothy Parker, John Dos Passos, and George Bernard Shaw — demanded and campaigned for a retrial. They were unsuccessful. On August 23, 1927, seven years after their arrest, Sacco and Vanzetti were sent to the electric chair. The execution caused riots in Germany, Paris, and London.
Good Girl (Kim Addonizio)
August 19, 2013
Good Girl
……………………………………………………………
Look at you, sitting there being good.
After two years you’re still dying for a cigarette.
And not drinking on weekdays, who thought that one up?
Don’t you want to run to the corner right now
for a fifth of vodka and have it with cranberry juice
and a nice lemon slice, wouldn’t the backyard
that you’re so sick of staring out into
look better then, the tidy yard your landlord tends
day and night — the fence with its fresh coat of paint,
the ash-free barbeque, the patio swept clean of small twigs—
don’t you want to mess it all up, to roll around
like a dog in his flowerbeds? Aren’t you a dog anyway,
always groveling for love and begging to be petted?
You ought to get into the garbage and lick the insides
of the can, the greasy wrappers, the picked-over bones,
you ought to drive your snout into the coffee grounds.
Ah, coffee! Why not gulp some down with four cigarettes
and then blast naked into the streets, and leap on the first
beautiful man you find? The words ruin me, haven’t they
been jailed in your throat for forty years, isn’t it time
you set them loose in slutty dresses and torn fishnets
to totter around in five-inch heels and slutty mascara?
Sure it’s time. You’ve rolled over long enough.
Forty, forty-one. At the end of all this
there’s one lousy biscuit, and it tastes like dirt.
So get going. Listen: they’re howling for you now:
up and down the block your neighbors’ dogs
burst into frenzied barking and won’t shut up.
“Good Girl” by Kim Addonizio, from Tell Me. © American Poet Continuum.
Good Loving Woman 