Animals do not like change

First redwing. --

July 18 [1852]. … To the Sudbury meadows in boat. …

Horsemint (Mentha Canadensis) is now out. …

There is a grand view of the river from the hill near Rice’s. The outlines of this hill, as you ascend it, and its various swells are very grateful, closely grazed, with a few shade trees on its sides. You look far south over the gulf meadow, and north also. … Round Hill is a mathematical curve. The petals of the rhexia have a beautiful clear purple with a violet tinge.

[Thoreau, JOURNAL]

==========

To maintain a modicum of tranquility in the barnyard, there are three cardinal principles that I try to follow. The first is to realize that animals do not like change. … establish a routine with them and stick to it …

Secondly, in teaching them a routine … bribe them with food. …

Thirdly, [try not] to handle just one animal alone unless the animal is accustomed to being alone. A flock of sheep want to be together and an individual sheep will, like a teenager, get very upset if separated from its crowd.

[THE CONTRARY FARMER]

==========

SWEET-SCENTED WHITE WATER-LILY; POND LILY; WATER NYMPH; WATER

CABBAGE

Castalia odorata (Nymphaea odorata)

Flowers--Pure white or pink tinged, rarely deep pink, solitary, 3 to 8

in. across, deliciously fragrant, floating. Calyx of 4 sepals, green

outside; petals of indefinite number, overlapping in many rows, and

gradually passing into an indefinite number of stamens; outer row of

stamens with petaloid filaments and short anthers, the inner yellow

stamens with slender filaments and elongated anthers; carpels of

indefinite number, united into a compound pistil, with spreading and

projecting stigmas. Leaves: Floating, nearly round, slit at bottom,

shining green above, reddish and more or less hairy below, 4 to 12 in.

across, attached to petiole at centre of lower surface. Petioles and

peduncles round and rubber-like, with 4 main air-channels. Rootstock:

(Not true stem) thick, simple or with few branches, very long.

Preferred Habitat--Still water, ponds, lakes, slow streams.

Flowering Season--June-September.

Distribution--Nova Scotia to Gulf of Mexico, and westward to the

Mississippi.

Sumptuous queen of our native aquatic plants, of the royal family to

which the gigantic Victoria regia of Brazil belongs, and all the

lovely rose, lavender, blue, and golden exotic water-lilies in the

fountains of our city parks, to her man, beast, and insect pay grateful

homage. In Egypt, India, China, Japan, Persia, and Asiatic Russia, how

many millions have bent their heads in adoration of her relative the

sacred lotus! From its centre Brahma came forth; Buddha, too, whose

symbol is the lotus, first appeared floating on the mystic flower

(Nelumbo nelumbo). Happily the lovely pink or white "sacred bean" or

"rose-lily" of the Nile, often cultivated here, has been successfully

naturalized in ponds about Bordentown, New Jersey, and may be elsewhere.

If he who planteth a tree is greater than he who taketh a city, that man

should be canonized who introduces the magnificent wild flowers of

foreign lands to our area of Nature's garden.

[Neltje Blanchan, WILD FLOWERS WORTH KNOWING]

==========

Up to the year 1791 there had been no excise tax in the United Colonies

or the United States. (One that had been tried in Pennsylvania was

utterly abortive). Then the country fell upon hard times. A larger

revenue had to be raised, and Hamilton suggested an excise. The measure

was bitterly opposed by many public men, notably by Jefferson; but it

passed. Immediately there was trouble in the tall timber.

Western Pennsylvania, and the mountains southward, had been settled, as

we have seen, by the Scotch-Irish; men who had brought with them a

certain fondness for whiskey, a certain knack in making it, and an

intense hatred of excise, on general as well as special principles.

There were few roads across the mountains, and these few were

execrable--so bad, indeed, that it was impossible for the backwoodsmen

to bring their corn and rye to market, except in a concentrated form.

The farmers of the seaboard had grown rich, from the high prices that

prevailed during the French Revolution; but the mountain farmers had

remained poor, owing partly to difficulties of tillage, but chiefly to

difficulties of transportation. As Albert Gallatin said, in defending

the western people, "We have no means of bringing the produce of our

lands to sale either in grain or in meal. We are therefore distillers

through necessity, not choice, that we may comprehend the greatest value

in the smallest size and weight. The inhabitants of the eastern side of

the mountains can dispose of their grain without the additional labor of

distillation at a higher price than we can after we have disposed that

labor upon it."

Again, as in all frontier communities, there was a scarcity of cash in

the mountains. Commerce was carried on by barter; but there had to be

some means of raising enough cash to pay taxes, and to purchase such

necessities as sugar, calico, gun powder, etc., from the peddlers who

brought them by pack train across the Alleghanies. Consequently a still

had been set up on nearly every farm. A horse could carry about sixteen

gallons of liquor, which represented eight bushels of grain, in weight

and bulk, and double that amount in value. This whiskey, even after it

had been transported across the mountains, could undersell even so

cheap a beverage as New England rum--so long as no tax was laid upon it.

But when the newly created Congress passed an excise law, it virtually

placed a heavy tax on the poor mountaineers' grain, and let the grain of

the wealthy eastern farmers pass on to market without a cent of charge.

Naturally enough, the excitable people of the border regarded such a law

as aimed exclusively at themselves. They remonstrated, petitioned,

stormed. "From the passing of the law in January, 1791, there appeared a

marked dissatisfaction in the western parts of Pennsylvania, Maryland,

Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia. The legislatures of North

Carolina, Virginia and Maryland passed resolutions against the law, and

that of Pennsylvania manifested a strong spirit of opposition to it. As

early as 1791, Washington was informed that throughout this whole region

the people were ready for revolt." "To tax their stills seemed a blow at

the only thing which obdurate nature had given them--a lot hard indeed,

in comparison with that of the people of the sea-board."

[Horace Kephart, OUR SOUTHERN HIGHLANDERS]

==========

If a man were called to fix the period in the history of the world,

during which the condition of the human race was most happy and

prosperous, he would, without hesitation, name that which elapsed from

the death of Domitian to the accession of Commodus. The vast extent of

the Roman empire was governed by absolute power, under the guidance of

virtue and wisdom. The armies were restrained by the firm but gentle

hand of four successive emperors, whose characters and authority

commanded involuntary respect. The forms of the civil administration

were carefully preserved by Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, and the Antonines,

who delighted in the image of liberty, and were pleased with considering

themselves as the accountable ministers of the laws. Such princes

deserved the honor of restoring the republic, had the Romans of their

days been capable of enjoying a rational freedom. … It is almost

superfluous to enumerate the unworthy successors of Augustus.

Their unparalleled vices, and the splendid theatre on which they were

acted, have saved them from oblivion. The dark, unrelenting Tiberius,

the furious Caligula, the feeble Claudius, the profligate and cruel

Nero, the beastly Vitellius, and the timid, inhuman Domitian, are

condemned to everlasting infamy. During fourscore years (excepting only

the short and doubtful respite of Vespasian's reign) Rome groaned

beneath an unremitting tyranny, which exterminated the ancient families

of the republic, and was fatal to almost every virtue and every talent

that arose in that unhappy period.

[Edward Gibbon]

==========

It was an age of servants. Households had servants the way modern people have appliances. Common laborers had servants. Sometimes servants had servants.

Servants were more than a help and convenience; they were a vital indicator of status. Guests at dinner parties might find that they had been seated according to the number of servants they kept. People held on to their servants almost for dear life. Even on the American frontier and even after she had lost almost everything in a doomed business venture, Frances Trollpoe … kept a liveried footman. Karl Marx, living in chronic indebtedness in Soho and often barely able to put food on the table, employed a housekeeper AND a personal secretary. The household was so crowded that the secretary – a man named Pieper – had to share a bed with Marx. (Somehow, even so, Marx managed to put together enough private moments to seduce and impregnate the housekeeper, who bore him a son in the year of the Great Exhibition.)

[Bill Bryson, AT HOME]

__________

»Who Is Billy Crystal?

You knew it was coming.

Mr. Bean Not Dead

-----

Twitching Teens Are Getting Better [Twitching]

Remember the twitching teen epidemic? That's still going on — but there is good news at last: two of the affected girls have fully recovered, and three more are on the mend.

-----

Christopher Plummer becomes oldest Oscar winner at 82 for his performance in …

-----

Lucy Lawless Arrested in New Zealand

-----

ALIENS ATTACK LAMBS

SCHMALLENBERG, GERMANY – Local authorities believe a virus is killing their lambs, but WWN can confirm that The Gootans are responsible

A number of lambs were born dead or with serious deformities such as fused limbs and twisted necks, which mean they cannot survive.

Scientists urgently tried to find out how the “disease”, which they thought would also affect cattle, spreading to more and more farms every day.

But, it is NOT a virus. The United Nations sent Dr. Susan Begley, the leader of the International Panel on Extraterrestrials and lead scientist and ufologist, Banesh Bannerjee, to Schmallenberg to investigate.

Their conclusion: The Gootans have struck again.

-----

Little one keeping you up? Pink looks tired as she steps up make-up free

-----

Feeling a bit peck-ish, deer? The moment crow swooped down and perched on bemused roe's head

You might think this bird was stark 'raven' mad to land on an unsuspecting deer's head.

But far from shaking off the crow, the roe seemed to actually enjoy the attention.

-----

Santorum: JFK's 1960 speech on separation of church and state 'makes me want to throw up'

-----

Meryl Streep wins best actress Oscar for her portrayal of Margaret Thatcher in The Iron Lady. 

'Sponges grow spontaneously either attached to a rock or on sea-beaches, and they get their nutriment in slime'

July 10 [1852].

The Skull-cap (Scutellaria galericulata) is open in this meadow, a pretty conspicuous blue flower. Also the Drosera longifolia. That sort of erigeron is open. …

July 12.

I hear the toads still at night, together with bullfrogs, but not so universally nor so loud as formerly. I go to walk at twilight, – at the same time that toads go to their walks, and are seen hopping about the sidewalks or the pump. Now, a quarter after nine, as I walk along the river-bank, long after starlight, and perhaps an hour or more after sunset, I see some of those high-pillared clouds of the day, in the southwest, still reflecting a downy light from the regions of day, they are so high. It is a pleasing reminiscence of the day in the midst of the deepening shadows of the night. …

July 16.

Beck Stow’s Swamp! What an incredible spot to think of in town or city! …

That Sericocarpus conyzoides prevails now, and the entire-leaved erigeron still abounds everywhere. The meadows on the Turnpike are WHITE with the meadow-rue NOW MORE THAN EVER. They are filled with it many feet high. … All flowers are handsomer in rain.

[Thoreau, JOURNAL]

==========

STOCK | Matthiola incana, M. longipetala bicornis (syn. M. bicornis)

For ‘fans of fragrance’ these two plants are mandatory; and they are, predictably, ‘back in style’ … stock is sold by the plant hawkers in spring, and ‘that’s a good thing’ – meaning that scented double-flower’d varieties are open for inspection, while plants started from seed are not entirely reliable … the seed may be sown in situ in early spring or late fall; sow on surface … and, hey, ‘is having a mix of singles and doubles really all that unfortunate’? … they are ‘a snap to grow in cool summer areas’; in hot summer areas, don’t bother … Virginia stock (M. maritima) is not dissimilar to the previous; direct-sow in spring and ‘rake it in’ – they self-sow, as does longipetala …

[ANNUALS FOR EVERY PURPOSE]

==========

WATER-LILY FAMILY (Nymphaeaceae)

LARGE YELLOW POND, OR WATER, LILY; COW LILY; SPATTERDOCK

Nymphaea advena (Nuphar advena)

Flowers--Yellow or greenish outside, rarely purple tinged, round,

depressed, 1-1/2 to 3-1/2 in. across. Sepals 6, unequal, concave, thick,

fleshy; petals stamen-like, oblong, fleshy, short; stamens very

numerous, in 5 to 7 rows; pistil compounded of many carpels, its

stigmatic disc pale red or yellow, with 12 to 24 rays. Leaves:

Floating, or some immersed, large, thick, sometimes a foot long,

egg-shaped or oval, with a deep cleft at base, the lobes rounded.

Preferred Habitat--Standing water, ponds, slow streams.

Flowering Season--April-September.

Distribution--Rocky Mountains eastward, south to the Gulf of Mexico,

north to Nova Scotia.

Comparisons were ever odious. Because the Yellow Water-lily has the

misfortune to claim relationship with the sweet-scented white species

must it never receive its just meed of praise? Hiawatha's canoe, let it

be remembered,

"Floated on the river

Like a yellow leaf in autumn,

Like a yellow water-lily."

But even those who admire Longfellow's lines see less beauty in the

golden flower-bowls floating among the large, lustrous, leathery leaves.

[Neltje Blanchan, WILD FLOWERS WORTH KNOWING]

==========

Here, then, is a conundrum: How does it happen that moonshining is

distinctly a foible of the southern mountaineer?

To get to the truth, we must hark back into that eighteenth century

wherein, as I have already remarked, our mountain people are lingering

to this day. We must leave the South; going, first, to Ireland of 150 or

175 years ago, and then to western Pennsylvania shortly after the

Revolution.

The people of Great Britain, irrespective of race, have always been

ardent haters of excise laws. As Blackstone has curtly said, "From its

original to the present time, the very name of excise has been odious

to the people of England." Dr. Johnson, in his dictionary, defined

excise as "A hateful tax levied upon commodities, and adjudged not by

the common judges of property, but by wretches hired by those to whom

excise is paid." In 1659, when the town of Edinburgh placed an

additional impost on ale, the Convenanter Nicoll proclaimed it an act so

impious that immediately "God frae the heavens declared his anger by

sending thunder and unheard tempests and storms." And we still recall

Burns' fiery invective:

Thae curst horse-leeches o' the Excise

Wha mak the whisky stills their prize!

Haud up thy han', Deil! ance, twice, thrice!

There, seize the blinkers! [wretches]

An bake them up in brunstane pies

For poor d--n'd drinkers.

Perhaps the chief reason, in England, for this outspoken detestation of

the exciseman lay in the fact that the law empowered him to enter

private houses and to search at his own discretion. In Scotland and

Ireland there was another objection, even more valid in the eyes of the

common people; excise struck heaviest at their national drink.

Englishmen, at the time of which we are speaking, were content with

their ale, not yet having contracted the habit of drinking gin; but

Scotchmen and Irishmen preferred distilled spirits, manufactured, as a

rule, out of their own barley, in small pot-stills (POTEEN means,

literally, a little pot), the process being a common household art

frequently practiced "every man for himself and his neighbor."

[Horace Kephart, OUR SOUTHERN HIGHLANDERS]

==========

We had another visitor from Brown's Flat to-day, an old Indian woman

with a basket on her back. Like our first caller from the village, she

got fairly into camp and was standing in plain view when discovered. How

long she had been quietly looking on, I cannot say. Even the dogs failed

to notice her stealthy approach. She was on her way, I suppose, to some

wild garden, probably for lupine and starchy saxifrage leaves and

rootstocks. Her dress was calico rags, far from clean. In every way she

seemed sadly unlike Nature's neat well-dressed animals, though living

like them on the bounty of the wilderness. Strange that mankind alone is

dirty. Had she been clad in fur, or cloth woven of grass or shreddy

bark, like the juniper and libocedrus mats, she might then have seemed a

rightful part of the wilderness; like a good wolf at least, or bear. But

from no point of view that I have found are such debased fellow beings a

whit more natural than the glaring tailored tourists we saw that

frightened the birds and squirrels.

[John Muir, MY FIRST SUMMER IN THE SIERRA]

==========

Of SPONGES there are three species; the first is of loose porous texture,

the second is close textured, the third, which is nicknamed 'the sponge

of Achilles', is exceptionally fine and close-textured and strong.

This sponge is used as a lining to helmets and greaves, for the purpose

of deadening the sound of the blow; and this is a very scarce species.

Of the close textured sponges such as are particularly hard and rough

are nicknamed 'goats'.

Sponges grow spontaneously either attached to a rock or on sea-beaches,

and they get their nutriment in slime: a proof of this statement is

the fact that when they are first secured they are found to be full

of slime. This is characteristic of all living creatures that get

their nutriment by close local attachment. And, by the way, the close-textured

sponges are weaker than the more openly porous ones because their

attachment extends over a smaller area.

It is said that the sponge is sensitive; and as a proof of this statement

they say that if the sponge is made aware of an attempt being made

to pluck it from its place of attachment it draws itself together,

and it becomes a difficult task to detach it. It makes a similar contractile

movement in windy and boisterous weather, obviously with the object

of tightening its hold. Some persons express doubts as to the truth

of this assertion; as, for instance, the people of Torone.

[Aristotle, HISTORIA ANIMALIUM]

==========

One generality that comes close to being always true in my experience is that farmers who do not garden or who have never gardened, tend to be insensitive to the biological nature of their work …

On the other hand, the more gardeners immerse themselves in their biological art, the more they not only understand farmers but become farmers … no matter now small the garden … the biological activity going on there is a microcosm of the farm.

[THE CONTRARY FARMER]

==========

The golden age of gluttony was … the eighteenth century. This was the age of John Bull, the most ref-faced, overfed, coronary-ready icon ever created by any nation in the hope of impressing other nations. It is perhaps no coincidence that two of the fattest monarchs in British history did a great deal of their eating in the 1700s. The first was Queen Anne. Although paintings of Anne always tactfully made her look no more than a little fleshy … she was in fact jumbo-sized – ‘exceedingly gross and corpulent’ in the candid words of her former best friend the Duchess of Marlborough. Eventually Anne grew so stout that she could not go up and down stairs. A trapdoor had to be cut in the floor of her rooms at Windsor Castle through which she was lowered, jerkily and inelegantly, by means of pulleys and a hoist to the state rooms below. It must have been a most remarkable sight to behold. When she died, she was buried in a coffin that was ‘almost square’. Even more famously enormous was the prince regent, the future George IV, whose stomach when let out of its corset reportedly spilled to his knees. By the time he was forty his waist was more than four feet around.

Even slenderer people routinely sat down to quantities of food that seem impossibly munificent, if not positively destabilizing. A breakfast recorded by the Duke of Wellington consisted of ‘two pigeons and three beef-steaks, three parts of a bottle of Mozelle, a glass of champagne, two glasses of port and a glass of brandy’ … The Reverend Sydney Smith, though a man of the cloth, caught the spirit of the age by declining ever to say grace. ‘With the ravenous orgasm upon you, it seems impertinent to interpose a religious sentiment’, he explained. ‘It is a confusion of purpose to mutter out praises from a mouth that waters’.

[Bill Bryson, AT HOME]

__________

»A Snoring Hummingbird

OK, so now you know what a snoring hummingbird sounds like. IT IS A GOOD THING TO KNOW.

-----

The Cast Of Friends Explain Windows '95

Finally, a VHS casette that can explain Windows to me with all the hilarity of an episode of Friends.

-----

Robert F. Kennedy's Son Takes On Maternity Nurses

Douglas Kennedy, one of Robert F. Kennedy's sons, is facing misde … Kennedy … says the nurses TOTALLY STARTED IT.

-----

Billy Strange, ’60s Session Guitarist, Dies at 81

Mr. Strange recorded with Elvis Presley, Nat King Cole and the Beach Boys, wrote a No. 1 single for Chubby Checker and arranged Nancy Sinatra’s No. 1 pop hit “These Boots Are Made for Walkin’.”

-----

Dmitri Nabokov, Steward of Father’s Literary Legacy, Dies at 77

Dmitri Nabokov, the son of Vladimir Nabokov, who tended to the legacy of his father with the posthumous publication of a volume of personal letters, an unpublished novella and an unfinished novel that his father had demanded be burned, died on Wednesday in Vevey, Switzerland. He was 77.

-----

Hey Mom! Mom! Mooom? Teh nice hoomin sedz dat Ai iz a lil kyooteh pu, but Ai iz not a pie! Ai iz a goggie

-----

Microbrewer Trying To Work Dog Into Name Of New Seasonal Beer

SENECA, OR—Owner and founder of Fossil Bed Brewery Dave Walker, 39, reportedly struggled Saturday to find a way to work his 5-year-old Labrador retriever mix into the name of a new spiced winter ale. "I was going to just call it Puppy Weizen, but that's kind of impersonal, and technically it's not a wheat beer," said Walker, who has so far failed to find a name that captures both his pet's personality and the distinct raisin and pepper flavoring of the microbrew. "I have to do something to make it stand out on the shelf alongside Flying Dog, Sea Dog, Turbodog, Smuttynose Old Brown Dog, and Dogfish Head." At press time, Walker had yet to figure out how make his dog, Barley, a part of the beer’s name.

-----

GUSTAV THEODORE HOLST (born Gustavus Theodore von Holst, 21 September 1874 – 25 May 1934) was an English composer. He is most famous for his orchestral suite The Planets.

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Bin Laden's last refuge is razed in the dead of night …

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GOP Jerk’s Wife Withholds Sex Because Of Transvaginal Ultrasound Bill

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'I, Putin'

An Inside Look at Russia's Aging, Lonely Leader

Nuremberg's Bratwurst Dilemma

Is Iran Conflict Increasing Sausage Costs?

'Bathing is an undescribed luxury'

With modern pre-treatment methods, urban waste managers have found ways to deliver an entirely safe, composted sewage sludge to farmers at a cost that is cheaper than conventional fertilizers. After initial hesitancy, farmers are lining up to get this material, which is also being used to restore strip-mined lands to forest and meadow. Unfortunately, organic farming organizations, after much debate, have disapproved the use of pre-treated, composted sludge on certified organic farms. To me this was a stupid move which I think springs from our silly fear of our own excrement. For ten years I have followed this debate and as a writer have worked closely with the leading sludge scientists. True, in earlier times, PCB-contaminated sludge was a remote possibility … but with modern pretreatment and constant monitoring, sludge is, as USDA scientist Dr. Rufus Chaney says, as safe as any soil amendment or fertilizer can be. He once pointed out to me that there is more cadmium applied to farmland by way of commercial fertilizer in one year than in all the sludge ever spread. … Of course the Chinese would smile at this debate. They have been using human excrement on their garden-farms for forty centuries. The only problem it seems to have caused them is over-population.

[THE CONTRARY FARMER]

==========

July 7 [1852].

Hayden says his old cow ‘split her bones’ in giving birth to a calf, and lies now helpless and incurable in the pasture, where he feeds her. …

July 9.

The Veratrum viride in the swamp is already turned yellow and decaying and half prostrate. Its fall is already come. …

Bathing is an undescribed luxury. To feel the wind blow on your body, the water flow on you and lave you, is a rare physical enjoyment this hot day. The water is remarkably warm here, especially in the shallows, – warm to the hand, like that which has stood long in a kettle over a fire. The pond water being so warm made the water of the brook feel very cold … The clams are, if possible, more numerous here, though perhaps smaller than at the shore under the Cliffs. I could collect many bushels of them.

The sandy shore just beyond this is quite yellow with the Utricularia cornuta, the small ranunculus, and the gratiola, all growing together. They make quite a show. A black snake on the sand retreats not into the bushes, but into the pond, amid the pontederia. The Rhus glabra is out. At Clematis Pond, the small arrowhead in the mud is still bleeding where cows have cropped. In some places the mud is covered with the Ilysanthes gratioloides, false pimpernel.

[Thoreau, JOURNAL]

==========

PURSLANE FAMILY (Portulacaceae)

SPRING BEAUTY; CLAYTONIA

Claytonia virginica

Preferred Habitat--Moist woods, open groves, low meadows.

Flowering Season--March-May.

Distribution--Nova Scotia and far westward, south to Georgia

and Texas.

Very early in the spring a race is run with the hepatica, arbutus,

adder's tongue, bloodroot, squirrel corn, and anemone for the honor of

being the earliest wild flower; and although John Burroughs and Doctor

Abbot have had the exceptional experience of finding the claytonia even

before the hepatica--certainly the earliest spring blossom worthy the

name in the Middle and New England states--of course the rank Skunk

Cabbage, whose name is snobbishly excluded from the list of fair

competitors, has quietly opened dozens of minute florets in its incurved

horn before the others have even started.

[Neltje Blanchan, WILD FLOWERS WORTH KNOWING]

==========

As a rule, the mountain people have no compunctions about drinking,

their ideas on this, as on other matters of conduct, being those current

everywhere in the eighteenth century. Men, women and children drink

whiskey in family concert. I have seen undiluted spirits drunk, a

spoonful at a time, by a babe that was still at the breast, and she

never batted an eye (when I protested that raw whiskey would ruin the

infant's stomach, the mother replied, with widened eyes: "Why, if

there's liquor about, and she don't git none, she JIST RAARS!"). In

spite of this, taking the mountain people by and large, they are an

abstemious race. In drinking, as in everything else, this is the Land of

Do Without. Comparatively few highlanders see liquor oftener than once

or twice a month. The lumberjacks and townspeople get most of the

output; for they can pay the price.

[Horace Kephart, OUR SOUTHERN HIGHLANDERS]

==========

The next phenomenon to which the advocates of the excessive

power of running water in times past have appealed, is the enormous size

of the blocks called ERRATIC, which lie scattered over the northern

parts of Europe and North America. Unquestionably a large proportion of

these blocks have been transported far from their original position, for

between them and the parent rocks we now find, not unfrequently, deep

seas and valleys intervening, or hills more than a thousand feet high.

To explain the present situation of such travelled fragments, a deluge

of mud has been imagined by some to have come from the north, bearing

along with it sand, gravel, and stony fragments, some of them hundreds

of tons in weight. This flood, in its transient passage over the

continents, dispersed the boulders irregularly over hill, valley, and

plain; or forced them along over a surface of hard rock, so as to polish

it and leave it indented with parallel scratches and grooves--such

markings as are still visible in the rocks of Scandinavia, Scotland,

Canada, and many other countries.

There can be no doubt that the myriads of angular and rounded blocks

above alluded to, cannot have been borne along by ordinary rivers or

marine currents, so great is their volume and weight, and so clear are

the signs, in many places, of time having been occupied in their

successive deposition; for they are often distributed at various depths

through heaps of regularly stratified sand and gravel. No waves of the

sea raised by earthquakes, nor the bursting of lakes dammed up for a

time by landslips or by avalanches of snow, can account for the observed

facts …

[Charles Lyell, PRINCIPLES OF GEOLOGY]

==========

The smaller animals wander about as if in a tropical forest. I saw the

entire flock of sheep vanish at one side of a patch and reappear a

hundred yards farther on at the other, their progress betrayed only by

the jerking and trembling of the fronds; and strange to say very few of

the stout woody stalks were broken. I sat a long time beneath the

tallest fronds, and never enjoyed anything in the way of a bower of wild

leaves more strangely impressive. Only spread a fern frond over a man's

head and worldly cares are cast out, and freedom and beauty and peace

come in. The waving of a pine tree on the top of a mountain,--a magic

wand in Nature's hand,--every devout mountaineer knows its power; but

the marvelous beauty value of what the Scotch call a breckan in a still

dell, what poet has sung this? It would seem impossible that any one,

however incrusted with care, could escape the Godful influence of these

sacred fern forests. Yet this very day I saw a shepherd pass through one

of the finest of them without betraying more feeling than his sheep.

"What do you think of these grand ferns?" I asked. "Oh, they're only

d----d big brakes," he replied.

[John Muir, MY FIRST SUMMER IN THE SIERRA]

==========

Looking back now, it is nearly impossible to get a fix on Victorians and their diet.

For a start, the range of foods was dazzling. People, it seems, ate practically anything that stirred in the undergrowth or could be hauled from water. Ptarmigan, sturgeon, larks, hare, woodcock, gurnet, barbel, smelts, plover, snipe, gudgeon, dace, eels, tench, sprats, smelts, turkey poults, and many more largely forgotten delicacies … Fruits and vegetables seemed almost infinite in number. Of apples along there were, almost unbelievably, more than two thousand varieties to choose from – Worcester pearmain, Beauty of Bath, Cox’s orange pippin, and so on in long and poetic vein. At Monticello … Jefferson grew 23 different types of peas and more than 250 kinds of fruits and vegetables. (Unusual for his day, Jefferson was practically a vegetarian and ate only small portions of meat as a kind of ‘condiment’.) As well as gooseberries, strawberries, plums, figs, … Jefferson and his contemporaries also enjoyed tayberries, tansy, purslane, Japanese wine berries, damsons, medlars, seakale, screwpipe, rounceval peas, skirrets (a kind of sweet root), cardoons (a thistle), scorzonera (a type of salsify), lovage, turnip-cabbage, and scores more that nowadays are encountered rarely or not at all. Jefferson was … also the father of the American French fry.

Part of the reason people could eat so well was that many foods that we now think of as delicacies were plenteous then. Lobsters bred in such abundance around Britain’s coastline that they were fed to prisoners and orphans or ground up for fertilizer …

[Bill Bryson, AT HOME]

__________

»Three Amish Guys Getting Autographs At Spring Training

These dudes are having the best time at Spring Training 2012!

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Stephen Hawking, Sex Club Connoisseur

Radar Online is following a story that makes me love famed physicist Stephen Hawking even more than I ever thought possible.

Radar Online has a source inside California sex club Devore who claims that Renown physicist Stephen Hawking is somewhat of a regular:

'The source notes that Hawking, who is wheelchair-bound due to a long-time battle with Lou Gehrig's disease, has his staff stand nearby watching while he's with the women.'

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Kristin Chenoweth's Bizarre "Late Show" Interview

I want some of what she's on! Kristin Chenoweth stopped by tonight's “Late Show” to, in theory, plug her upcoming ABC dramedy, “GCB,” and catch up with David Letterman. Instead, we were treated to a rambling tale of eyelash extensions, formaldehyde allergies, Asian stereotypes, anti-inflammatory medication, Vicks VapoRub (in the nose, to kill bacteria), neck braces, falling earrings …

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In 1966, NASA sent astronauts David Scott and Neil Armstrong (yes, that Neil Armstrong) on a mission called Gemini 8. Their objective: complete the first ever space docking by joining with a previously launched unmanned craft called the Agena.

The mission went swimmingly. Six hours after launch, Scott and Armstrong had successfully docked with Agena, and everything was going good.

That is, until the death roll started.

…

After 27 minutes of post-docking relaxation, Scott happened to glance out of the window and noticed that everything was spinning. A software glitch had caused Agena's thruster rockets to malfunction, and they were firing away like a drunk cowboy. Unimpressed by this potentially life-threatening problem, Armstrong calmly balanced Gemini's own thrusters to stop the roll until he could turn off Agena's.

Armstrong, seen here smiling at his old friend Certain Fiery Death.

This fixed the problem ... for a few seconds. The roll quickly started again, more furiously than ever. Realizing that their spacecraft was in danger of breaking apart, Armstrong quickly undocked and moved away from the troublemaking Agena. Yet somehow, the spinning only increased.

Shit like this happens in space travel every once in a while, and it's usually fixed with a quick "Houston, we have a problem." However, Gemini 8 was temporarily out of radio contact at the time, which prevented the control center from telling them the plot twist: IT WAS THE GEMINI'S THRUSTER THAT WAS MALFUNCTIONING ALL ALONG.

…

The barrel roll got faster and faster, to the point where they were going at one revolution per second. It was more than fast enough to cause Scott and Armstrong to get dizzy and lose track of the location of Earth. This is widely thought to be the worst thing you can lose track of as an astronaut.

At that point, Neil Armstrong decided he'd had enough of space's shit. His vision blurred and, at the brink of going unconscious, Armstrong somehow managed to shrug off the effects of the insanity carousel enough to figure out the real problem and fix it like a boss. He turned off the malfunctioning thrusters and initiated early reentry, which brought the aircraft back under control and allowed the astronauts to regain their bearings. One relatively uneventful emergency landing later, the battered and bruised spacemen were safe and sound -- and Command Pilot Neil A. Armstrong had added a good 10 inches to his Space Dong.

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Everyone Wants a Dumb TV After All

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LUCY LAWLESS

I'm Peeing All Over the Arctic Oil Tanker

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This is a Hillary Clinton whale tail -- yes, the Secretary of State put her life on the line ... going face-to-face with a giant creature, and TMZ has the pics.

Hills was in Los Cabos, Mexico last weekend for the G20 summit -- but before the snooze fest kicked off ... she went whale watching!

Madam Secretary was taking in the sights with a bunch of diplomats ... when one of the massive mammals rocked her world by rubbing up against her dinghy. Based on the photos, Hillary's lucky she made it back to shore.

Thar she blows!!!

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Dolphins give themselves "names"—distinctive whistles that they use to identify each other, new research shows.

Scientists say it's the first time wild animals have been shown to call out their own names.

What's more, the marine mammals can recognize individual names even when the sound is produced by an unfamiliar voice.

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Mitt Romney Delivers Big Speech About Nothing To Empty Stadium

Even Sociopathic Pat Buchanan Thinks Rick Santorum Is Nuts

'A stout, buxom, exuberantly healthy lassie among flowers is Bouncing Bet'

July 4 [1852].

Can that meadow fragrance come from the purple summits of the eupatorium? …

PM – To Second Division Brook.

The Typha latifolia, or reed-mace, sheds an abundance of sulphur-like pollen into the hand now. Its tall and handsome swords are seen waving above the bushes in low grounds now. What I suppose the Vaccinium fuscatum, or black blueberry, is now ripe here and there, quite small. Heard the blating or lowing of a calf. Sat in the shade … in front of J. Hosmer’s cottage … This cottage and the landscape … is a pleasing sight. It is picturesque. …

There is a meadow on the Assabet just above Derby’s Bridge, – it may contain an acre, – bounded on one side by the river, on the other by alders and a hill, completely covered with small hummocks …

July 6. 2.30 PM – To Beck Stow’s, thence to Saw Mill Brook, and return by Walden. …

A quail. I associate its whistle with breezy weather. …

The Erigeron stigosus (integrifolius of Bigelow) is very common now in the fields, the flowers on the branches generally higher than the middle ones, like small white asters. At Saw Mill Brook, Ciraea alpina, enchanter’s-nightshade, moist shady places, with thin tender leaves SOMEWHAT like the touch-me-not’s, – a [?] sounding name for so inconspicuous a flower.

[Thoreau, JOURNAL]

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COMMON SEABUCKTHORN | Hippophae rhamnoides L.

‘It is a very hardy deciduous shrub or a small tree used primarily for ornamental purposes. In Europe and Asia, however, it is used in hedges and screens, and to protect and enrich eroded soils. A tendency to form thickets by root suckering limits its use in shelterbelts. The berries, a rich source of vitamins, have been sued in making cordial and jam in Siberia’. … sharp thorns aplenty … dioecious … seed crops borne annually … fruits may be picked fall through spring; macerate in water … seeds can be stored at room temperature for a fairly long time … stratify in moist sand for 90 days at temperatures between 36 and 41° … germination is epigeal … provide shade during early days of germination … propagate by layers, suckers, and root cuttings …

[SEEDS OF WOODY PLANTS IN THE UNITED STATES]

==========

The moral of the story is that the proving ground for real change in farming has almost always been the garden. Commercial farmers are good at improving their existing technologies, but rarely do they initiate pivotal new practices because they are financially strapped to the mass market and can’t afford to risk the possible profit loss of changing horses in mid-field. New agricultural ideas come from gardens where financial profit is not a necessary goal; generally these gardens are city gardens. Fresh new ideas in any institutionalized activity … almost always come from the outside. …

For example, alfalfa was a medicinal plant in Paris a century before it became a farm crop throughout Europe. Edward Faulkner wrote his revolutionary best-seller, Plowman’s Folly, based on experimentation he did in a garden near Elyria, Ohio, not on a farm. It was city gardeners, not farmers, who, with ample supplies of manure from livery stables and street sweepings, brought real sophistication and efficiency to the use of animal manures for food production, as is amply clear from books like Benjamin Albaugh’s The Gardenette or City Back yard Gardening, published in 1915. it was urban influences, following the work of chemist Jestus von Leibig in nineteenth-century Germany, that introduced to resisting farmers an agromony based on chemicals. Today it is city gardeners, following scientists like Sir Albert Howard and Dr. Selman Waksman, who have introduced, again to resisting farmers, the notion of an agriculture based intentionally on biology. Leibig disproved the prevalent nineteenth-century notion that plants got all their food from humus. But in proving that plants ‘eat’ minerals, not humus, Leibig went to the opposite extreme and demeaned the practical necessity of humus, and humus-derived nutrients, for a sustainable and efficient agriculture.

The whole organic farming movement, which now extends even to cotton, a crop once thought impossible to grow without toxic chemicals, was of course inspired by city gardeners. But organic gardens, which in my rural are are still sometimes viewed as the invention of ‘commie liberals’, are not the only generator of change in this regard.

[Gene Logsdon, THE CONTRARY FARMER]

==========

SOAPWORT; BOUNCING BET; HEDGE PINK; BRUISEWORT; OLD MAID'S PINK;

FULLER'S HERB

Saponaria officinalis

Preferred Habitat--Roadsides, banks, and waste places.

Flowering Season--June-September.

Distribution--Generally common. Naturalized from Europe.

A stout, buxom, exuberantly healthy lassie among flowers is Bouncing

Bet, who long ago escaped from gardens whither she was brought from

Europe, and ran wild beyond colonial farms to roadsides, along which she

has travelled over nearly our entire area. Underground runners and

abundant seed soon form thrifty colonies. This plant, to which our

grandmothers ascribed healing virtues, makes a cleansing, soap-like

lather when its bruised leaves are agitated in water.

[Neltje Blanchan, WILD FLOWERS WORTH KNOWING]

==========

It is a strange and unworthy feeling that prompts a man not to

claim that to which he has a right, for fear that he may one day lose

it; for by the same reasoning he might refuse wealth, reputation, or

wisdom, for fear of losing them hereafter. We see even virtue, the

greatest and most dear of all possessions, can be destroyed by disease

or evil drugs; and Thales by avoiding marriage still had just as much to

fear, unless indeed he ceased to love his friends, his kinsmen, and his

native land. But even he adopted his sister's son Kybisthus; for the

soul has a spring of affection within it, and is formed not only to

perceive, to reflect, and to remember, but also to love. If it finds

nothing to love at home, it will find something abroad; and when

affection, like a desert spot, has no legitimate possessors, it is

usurped by bastard children or even servants, who when they have

obtained our love, make us fear for them and be anxious about them. So

that one may often see men, in a cynical temper, inveighing against

marriage and children, who themselves shortly afterwards will be plunged

into unmanly excesses of grief, at the loss of their child by some slave

or concubine. Some have even shown terrible grief at the death of dogs

and horses; whereas others, who have lost noble sons, made no unusual or

unseemly exhibition of sorrow, but passed the remainder of their lives

calmly and composedly. Indeed it is weakness, not affection, which

produces such endless misery and dread to those who have not learned to

take a rational view of the uncertainty of life, and who cannot enjoy

the presence of their loved ones because of their constant agony for

fear of losing them. We should not make ourselves poor for fear of

losing our property, nor should we guard ourselves against a possible

loss of friends by making none; still less ought we to avoid having

children for fear that our child might die. But we have already dwelt

too much upon this subject.

[PLUTARCH'S LIVES]

==========

The old-fashioned flowers in the gardens of New England--blue-bells,

crocuses, primroses, foxglove, and many others--appear to be wild flowers

here on English soil. There is something very touching and pretty in

this fact, that the Puritans should have carried their field and hedge

flowers, and nurtured theme in their gardens, until, to us, they seem

entirely the product of cultivation.

[Nathaniel Hawthorne, PASSAGES FROM THE ENGLISH NOTEBOOKS]

__________

»Tabloid Sneaks Into Whitney Houston's Funeral To Snap Casket Photos

This is such a low move, even other tabloids are blurring out the image

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Awful Person Now in Possession of Disgusting John Edwards Sex Tape

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J.K. Rowling has signed a deal with publishing house Little, Brown Book Group and will soon be releasing a new novel, this time for adults.

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Lucy Lawless -- Belting Out 'Xena' War Cries During Oil Tanker Protest

Lucy Lawless is currently strapped to the top of an oil tanker in New Zealand ... screaming "Xena" war cries from the top of her lungs in an effort to halt drilling plans in the Arctic ... and TMZ has it all on tape. Lawless and six other members of…

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ZOMBIES BACK ROMNEY

PHOENIX – Aliens are backing Santorum, so Romney reached out and won the support of American Zombies!

Mitt Romney was reeling when he heard that aliens from Planet Zeeba were backing Rick Santorum and forming a super-Pac. He wanted to reach out to other “minority” Americans. He met with the Werewolf Association and a prominent Vampire Pac, but both of them rejected Romney. He looked into the Ghost Lobby, but they were also unimpressed with Romney.

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Buzz Aldrin, 82, is over the moon as he steps out with girlfriend …

He was accused of having a 'midlife crisis in old age' when he started dating a woman 30 years his junior.

But 82-year-old Buzz Aldrin's romance with bookstore executive Michelle Sucillon, 51, appears to still be going strong.

The couple were snapped looking as giddy as teenagers as they attended a pre-Oscars party in Los Angeles last night.

And the former astronaut couldn't stop smiling as he stood proudly and posed for the cameras on the red carpet, with Michelle beaming by his side.

She kept it simple but very chic in a little black dress which she teamed with nude slingback heels while he wore black trousers and rollneck jumper with a green corduroy jacket.

Buzz was looking remarkably sprightly for a man of his age but that might have something to do with his May to December relationship, which is no doubt keeping him feeling young.

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Is there a more quintessential wrinkled old rocker than the 64-year-old Ronald David Wood? It would take more than the world's supply of Botox and collagen to flatten his facial topography, he has been a member of the Rolling Stones for nearly 40 years, and he is about to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for a second time, as a member of The Faces.

And yet there's something different about the rake-thin, chain-smoking mop-head lolling amiably on the sofa in front of me ("I've just had a hole in me foot repaired!"). Unlike Bob Dylan, Mick Jagger, Eric Clapton, Keith Richards, Rod Stewart et al, what's interesting about Ronnie Wood is not so much what he has done, but who he has done it with (the five above, for a start). And not just musically – there's the sex, the drugs, the rehab, the art... and now the award-winning radio show (he was Sony Radio Personality of the Year last year) that is moving onto Sky TV.

"I never played with Elvis," he volunteers, "but there aren't many others!" He played with Dylan for Live Aid. "We'd been at my house for a week before, playing, and then we get on stage and he goes, 'lets play this!' It was hilarious – we played every song we hadn't rehearsed." Then Dylan broke a string. Wood gave him his own instrument and was reduced to playing air guitar to an audience of two billion.