During
substantially the whole of her short life of five or six years
the
queen lives in Egyptian darkness and stately seclusion of the royal
apartments,
with none about her but plebeian servants, who give her
empty
lip-affection in place of the love which her heart hungers for;
who
spy upon her in the interest of her waiting heirs, and report and
exaggerate
her defects and deficiencies to them; who fawn upon her and
flatter
her to her face and slander her behind her back; who grovel
before
her in the day of her power and forsake her in her age and
weakness.
There she sits, friendless, upon her throne through the long
night
of her life, cut off from the consoling sympathies and sweet
companionship
and loving endearments which she craves, by the gilded
barriers
of her awful rank; a forlorn exile in her own house and home,
weary
object of formal ceremonies and machine-made worship, winged child
of
the sun, native to the free air and the blue skies and the flowery
fields,
doomed by the splendid accident of her birth to trade this
priceless
heritage for a black captivity, a tinsel grandeur, and a
loveless
life, with shame and insult at the end and a cruel death--and
condemned
by the human instinct in her to hold the bargain valuable!
Huber,
Lubbock, Maeterlinck--in fact, all the great authorities--are
agreed
in denying that the bee is a member of the human family. I do not
know
why they have done this, but I think it is from dishonest motives.
Why,
the innumerable facts brought to light by their own painstaking
and
exhaustive experiments prove that if there is a master fool in the
world,
it is the bee. That seems to settle it.
[Mark
Twain, WHAT IS MAN?]
==========
Although
I was four years at the University, I did not take the
regular
course of studies, but instead picked out what I thought would
be
most useful to me, particularly chemistry, which opened a new
world,
and mathematics and physics, a little Greek and Latin, botany
and
geology. I was far from satisfied with what I had learned, and
should
have stayed longer. Anyhow I wandered away on a glorious
botanical
and geological excursion, which has lasted nearly fifty
years
and is not yet completed, always happy and free, poor and rich,
without
thought of a diploma or of making a name, urged on and on
through
endless, inspiring, Godful beauty.
From
the top of a hill on the north side of Lake Mendota I gained a
last
wistful, lingering view of the beautiful University grounds and
buildings
where I had spent so many hungry and happy and hopeful days.
There
with streaming eyes I bade my blessed Alma Mater farewell. But
I
was only leaving one University for another, the Wisconsin
University
for the University of the Wilderness.
THE
END
==========
In
fact, in the weeks and months which followed the completion of War
and Peace, Tolstoy was happiest when he did not have to think at
all. Games of bezique with his aunt were a pleasant diversion on cold
winter evenings, and a sign that he was unwinding (he generally
switched to playing patience compulsively when he was at the start of
a new work), but what he really enjoyed was cross-country skiing out
in the woods, and skating on the big pond below his house. He gave
lessons to his six-year-old son Sergey, and spent hours mastering
complicated manoeuvres on his own. When summer arrived he worked in
the garden, digging up nettles and burdock and tidying up the
flowerbeds. He also took himself off to the fields to spend whole
days mowing with the peasants … when he was writing Anna
Karenina, the novel’s most lyrical passages are devoted to the
ecstasies of scything … With the return of autumn Tolstoy went
hunting as usual, mostly for woodcock and hare, but the following
year he shot two wolves while on an expedition with friends.
[Rosamund
Bartlett]
==========
March
18 [1852].
A
wise man will not go out of his way for information. He might as well
go out of nature, or commit suicide.
I
am glad to hear that naked eyes are of any use, for I cannot afford
to buy a Munich telescope.
March
28. I heard, this forenoon, a
pleasant jingling note from the slate-colored snowbird on the oaks in
the sun on Minott’s hillside. Apparently they sing with us in the
pleasantest days before they go northward. …
As
I cannot go upon a Northwest Passage, then I will find a passage
round the actual world where I am. Connect the Behring Straits and
Lancaster Sounds of thought; winter on Melville Island, and make a
chart of Banks Land; explore the northward-trending Wellington Inlet,
where there is said to be a perpetual open sea, cutting my way
through floes of ice.
[Thoreau,
JOURNAL]
==========
I
saw them coming, an army of two with banners. He was tall, pale, eyes
narrowed from cigarette smoke of his own making (an eighty-a-day man
for years); she was small, round faced, somewhat bloated. … The
year, 1964.
She
said in a loud clear voice, ‘You’, and then I ceased to
understand her, ‘chung, cheers boog sightee Joyce yearsen roscoe
conkling’. I am certain that I heard the name of the
nineteenth-century New York senator, and I turned to the man – the
senator’s biographer? – and saw, like infected buttonholes, eyes
I dare not meet in dreams. ‘Tchess’. He took up the refrain.
‘Boog Joyce venially blind, too, bolder’. I had been drinking,
but not that much, while the tall man appeared sober. Obviously, I
was having my chronic problem with English voices: the low rapid
mumble, the urgent wheeze, the imploding diphthong, vowels wrongly
stressed …
We
were separated. I was told that I had been talking to Anthony Burgess
and his wife, Lynne. Burgess had written some comic novels about life
east of Maugham – or Suez; now there was a new book called A
Clockwork Orange. I knew nothing
of him except for one splendid anecdote. Under another name, he had
reviewed one of his own books in a British paper. The Brits were
horrified. I was delighted: Whitman had done the same. Besides …
shouldn’t there be at lest one review in all of England written by
someone who had actually read the book?
[Gore
Vidal]
==========
FOR
AN eater of weeds and gatherer of wild herbs, December may seem a
poor month for an expedition, but that partly depends on the
direction in which you go. …
I
loaded my cousin’s car with minnow net, waders, a camp cooking set,
and a spade. For a companion I took along my cousin’s little
daughter, who had been a fan of my books and is well on her way to
being a wild food freak. We took along some butter and a little salt
and drove into the country.
I
easily found my grandfather’s old place. A slight depression where
the rainwater cistern used to be was the only sign of a long-gone
house. The plants hadn’t changed. The blackberry vines appeared to
be the same ones that I had gathered wild fruit from when I was a boy
and from which my grandmother made crusty cobblers topped with thick
cream from the springhouse. …
Then
we came upon a hackberry tree crowded with hard red berries. It was
very near here, under a hackberry tree now long dead, that I invented
my first wild food recipe. When I was only five years old, I shelled
some hickory nuts and pounded them in a cloth with some of these
sweet hackberries, squeezing the resulting sticky paste into a ball,
then unwrapped and ate it. It was a wild candy bar. We have hickory
nuts and hackberries in Pennsylvania, where I had tried the same
trick. The result was so poor that I thought it must take a childish
taste to appreciate this delicacy. But when I tasted the hackberries
from this Texas tree I knew what had been wrong with my recent
attempts. These berries were ten times sweeter than those from
Pennsylvania trees. We gathered the dried berries in a bag.
[Euell
Gibbons]
==========
On
bright June days, when heat waves reflected from the warm ground
shimmer over the landscape, the EASTERN FIELD SPARROW sings. The
clear, sweet, pensive chant carries far on still days, and comes down
to the valley from bushy, hillside pastures and dry old fields along
the edges of the woods. He sings from a huckleberry bush, from a tall
weed, a fence-top, or some small birch or other pasture tree. The lay
is simple but it is one of the sweetest of the sparrow songs. …
Instead
of nesting about the domiciles of man, the usually retire to old
fields and bushy pastures, or low thickets along the edges of
woodlands, though occasionally a pair may select some neglected
garden for the home-site.
[Edward
Howe Forbush]
__________
»Joe
Paterno -- Reportedly Near Death
Joe
Paterno, the legendary former coach at Penn State University, is on
his death bed ... this according to several reports. A spokesman for
the family says doctors have "characterized his status as
serious."
-----
The
14 Most Interesting Facts About Kim Dotcom, The Founder Of Megaupload
-----
Typographer
Hates "Mission Impossible -- Ghost Protocol" Font
Type
designer Matthew Butterick was put off by the use of Microsoft’s
Verdana font in “Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol.” So he
did what any movie fanatic would do: Wrote the director to explain
why the use of IKEA’s favorite font was an utter failure.
-----
Newtmania!
Gingrich Wins South Carolina, Will Lose 80%-20% To Obama
That
was faster than dumping an ex-wife in the cancer ward! Whining
jewelry piglet and serial divorcing sac of ethics violations Newt
Gingrich has just been projected as the Big Wiener of the South
Carolina confederate primary. Should we live blog this historic
moment, which comes exactly 15 years after the last historic moment
for Gingrich? That was when he “became the first Speaker of the
House to be disciplined for his ethics violations by his own
colleagues,” a violation that cost the Newt $300,000 in penalties —
enough to buy a suitcase of tacky Tiffany bling for at least one more
new adulteress!
-----
The
GOP’s South Carolina nightmare
Newt
Gingrich just made life miserable for Mitt Romney – and for his
party
-----
Mitt
Washes His Magic Underwear For Good Luck in South Carolina Primary
A
Brief History of Rick Perry's Epic FAIL Campaign
-----
If
we asked someone in 2002 what they thought the Internet would look
like today, they'd probably guess we'd all be "Digging"
each others "Friendster" posts that we'd "Napstered"
to each other's "AOL." Things change on the Internet, and
10 years from now probably won't look anything like today.
-----
For
the first time, scientists are beginning to understand how exercise
works on the body and mind to make us healthier. It seems that
physical exertion helps promote autophagy, derived from the Greek for
'self-eating', which is the body's process of recycling worn-out or
malformed proteins. In research conducted in Texas, mice which ran on
treadmills produced more autophagosomes in their muscles and mice who
could not produce autophagosomes became more easily fatigued and
processed less sugar from the bloodstream.
…
Exercise
is about as close as it comes to a panacea, protecting the body and
mind against a host of ailments. And if autophagy is the process by
which exercise benefits us, then we may have found the first step to
prolonging life in dramatic fashion. Autophagy's process of recycling
proteins helps slow the aging process by getting rid of "wonky"
mitochondria, the power stations of the cell, and would reduce
free-radical production resulting from the oxidation of molecules in
our bodies.
-----
Romney
Cements Status As Candidate Who Can Somehow Lose To Newt Gingrich
Exit
Polls Reveal Majority Of South Carolina Voters Had Emotional
Breakdown In Voting Booth
Wooden
Fruit Hoping To Become Real Fruit One Day
-----
Heidi
Klum to File for Divorce From Seal
-----
EARTH
TO COLLIDE WITH NIBIRU ON JULY 21, 2012!
NASA
scientists reportedly have confirmed that the planet Nibiru will
collide with Earth in July of 2012.
The
Nibiru collision with Earth in 2012 had been predicted for a while,
but astrophysicists, cosmologists and astronomers around the world
have come to a consensus that Earth will collide with the planet,
which lies just outside Pluto.
-----
Jimmy
Castor, Musician Who Mastered Many Genres, Dies at 71
…
With
another band, the Jimmy Castor Bunch, he moved on to funk, combining
a big beat with spirited storytelling on records like “Troglodyte
(Cave Man)” on RCA, which hit No. 6 on the pop charts in 1972 and
sold a million copies.
-----
Is
this really fun for all the family? The giraffe hunters who pay
£10,000 to shoot the gentle giants with guns and bows for sport
Tourist
trophy hunters are paying thousands of pounds to go and shoot
giraffes with high-powered guns and bows.
The
gentle giants are loved around the world for their comical appearance
and gentle nature.
But
shocking images show how scores of big-spending men and women - and
even families - travel from across the globe, some even from Britain,
to kill them for sport.
-----
Saudi
Arabia. Nigeria. Venezuela. Canada?
Is
our neighbor to the north becoming a jingoistic petro-state?
-----
Official
Announcement: Picnik is closing
-----
…
9.54
pm. I'm done now. Enjoy your Saturday night. My take away? This is
the Republican crack-up people have been predicting for years.
Gingrich is on a roll. I think he can win this - and then lose this
in a way that could change America history. That is a brief
impression in one moment of time. But I cannot see Romney winning
this at this point. They are just not into him, and he's an awful
candidate.
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