ON
GIRLS
Girls
are very stuck up and dignefied in their maner and be have your.
They
think more of dress than anything and like to play with dowls and
rags.
They cry if they see a cow in a far distance and are afraid of
guns.
They stay at home all the time and go to church on Sunday. They
are
al-ways sick. They are always funy and making fun of boy's hands
and
they say how dirty. They cant play marbels. I pity them poor things.
They
make fun of boys and then turn round and love them. I dont beleave
they
ever kiled a cat or anything. They look out every nite and say oh
ant
the moon lovely. Thir is one thing I have not told and that is they
al-ways
now their lessons bettern boys.
[Mark
Twain]
==========
Cartilaginous
fish sleep at times so soundly
that
they may be caught by hand. The dolphin and the whale, and all
such
as are furnished with a blow-hole, sleep with the blow-hole over
the
surface of the water, and breathe through the blow-hole while
they
keep up a quiet flapping of their fins; indeed, some mariners
assure
us that they have actually heard the dolphin snoring.
Molluscs
sleep like fishes, and crustaceans also. It is plain also
that
insects sleep; for there can be no mistaking their condition
of
motionless repose. In the bee the fact of its being asleep is very
obvious;
for at night-time bees are at rest and cease to hum. But
the
fact that insects sleep may be very well seen in the case of common
every-day
creatures; for not only do they rest at night-time from
dimness
of vision (and, by the way, all hard-eyed creatures see but
indistinctly),
but even if a lighted candle be presented they continue
sleeping
quite as soundly.
[Aristotle,
HISTORIA ANIMALIUM]
==========
He
had also removed himself from the city. … The tranquility and
purer air of the countryside were also deemed necessary for Virginia
Poe’s slowly fading health. In February the Poe household settled
near the East River. A nine-year-old neighbour recalled how Poe would
‘run over every little while to ask my father to lend him our
rowboat, and then how he would enjoy himself pulling at the oars
over to the little islands just south of Blackwell’s Island, for
his afternoon swim’. …
Four
months later the Poe family moved further out to Fordham, a village
thirteen miles to the north of New York, where they found a small
cottage half-buried in blossom and fruit trees.
[Peter
Ackroyd]
==========
I’VE
BEEN daydreaming again. Forty-five years ago I lived on a homestead
in the Navajo Indian country of northwestern New Mexico, a fairly
high altitude region with severe winters. How we welcomed spring –
and not least because it meant a change of diet! Those who have grown
up in these days of supermarkets and frozen foods may have trouble
understanding how we craved fresh, green vegetables.
The
first green edibles were never domesticated plants, for nature offers
wild greens at least a month before it is time to even plant the
garden. We fairly gobbled salads made of peppergrass, wild mustards,
and dandelions. Plants we would fight as weeds later were welcome
now. Russian thistle, just peeping through the ground, was gathered
and cooked like spinach, and after a winter of vitamin-deficient
meals these greens tasted like ambrosia. No wonder I grew up with a
taste for wild foods!
[Euell
Gibbons, STALKING THE FARAWAY PLACES]
==========
Of
the Republic’s major literary and intellectual figures (the
division was not so clearly drawn then between town, as it were, and
gown), only one took a public stand. At forty-nine, William Dean
Howells was the author of … Indian Summer; he was also
easily the busiest and smoothest of America’s men of letters. Years
before, he had come out of Ohio to conquer the world of literature;
and had succeeded. He had been the first outlander to be editor of
the Atlantic Monthly. In the year of the Haymarket Square
riot, he had shifted the literary capital of the country from Boston
to New York when he took over Harper’s Monthly, for which he
wrote a column called ‘The Editor’s Study’; and a thousand
other things as well. That summer Howells had been reading Tolstoy.
In fact, Tolstoy was making a socialist out of him; and Howells was
appalled by Chicago’s judge, jury, and press. He was also turning
out his column, a hasty affair by his own best standards but
positively lapidary by ours.
In
the September 1886 issue of Harper’s,Howells, who had done
so much to bring Turgenev and Tolstoy to the attention of American
readers, decided to do the same for Dostoevsky, whose Crime and
Punishment was then available only in a French translation. Since
Howells had left school at fifteen, he had been able to become very
learned indeed. He had taught himself Latin and Greek; learned
Spanish, German, Italian, and French. … He was different from us. …
[Gore
Vidal]
==========
The
value of the pitch pine in winter is that it holds the snow so
finely. I see it now afar on the hillsides decking itself with it,
its whited towers forming coverts where the rabbit and the gray
squirrel lurk. It makes the most cheerful winter scenery beheld from
the window, you know so well the nature of the coverts and the sombre
light it makes.
[Thoreau,
JOURNAL]
==========
MONKEY
PUZZLE TREE | Araucaria araucana
… its
name refers to the frustrating situation a monkey would find himself
in if said monkey ever tried to climb the tree to consume the tasty
fruits … an individual needle of this tree may exist for more than
a decade … does not like summer heat; does not like wet feet in
summer or any other time; does not like hot or dry soils … full or
part sun … zones 6-7 … from an ancient lineage – ‘it is …
likely that this ancient “living fossil” was trying to thwart
herbivorous dinosaurs from devouring it with its abundance of stiff,
sharp leaves’ . … the Araucano people of Chile collect the seeds
and eat them … they exist in the wild only in the mountains of
central Chile and over to Argentina … has grown successfully in
southern England, southeastern Australia, New Zealand, the Pacific
Northwest, and Cape Cod … ‘If you have the suitable microclimate
and the space to grow it, it makes a riveting addition to the
landscape. Plus it may confuse monkeys, and who doesn’t love a
comically perplexed monkey?’ …
HONEY
LOCUST | Gleditsia triacanthos
… in
the 1970s, one Daniel Janzen hypothesized that the fruits of this
tree were eaten mostly by now-extinct Pleistocene creatures – giant
sloths, camels, elephants, giant beavers, and the like … few if any
living mammals will condescend to eat the fruits … ‘Other
examples of modern American tree fruits that belong to an earlier
time include Osage orange, Kentucky coffee tree, and giant mossy-cup
oak’. …
[BIZARRE
BOTANICALS]
==========
Mid-March
has passed and winter seems to have departed. Where but yesterday the
eye swept the unbroken snowy mantle of the hills, the earth now lies
bare and sodden, and here a faint vernal tinge and there a little
patch of snow. Swollen streams rush murmuring to the sea. Robust
Robins flutter among the crimson sumac berries, taking toll of the
supply of fruit, dried on the stem. A Bluebird warbles his soft love
song as he flutters from tree to tree in the old orchard, and far
away, from the hill pasture, comes an ‘earth-song’, a pastoral
plaintive and sweet, the fine strain of the EASTERN VESPER SPARROW. …
In
open pastures with short grass the nest is usually sunk in a little
hollow, so that its edge is about level with the surface of the sod.
When a nest is built in a tussock or a clump of weeds or bushes,
sometimes it is raised somewhat above the ground. Occasionally the
little domicile is built among standing grain …
Anyone
walking along a country road or through an upland pasture in spring
or summer may see the bird, a plain, rather dingy, striped sparrow,
running on ahead, flying only when closely approached, and now and
then showing its white outer tail feathers in flight. It is a bird of
the drier, upland fields, usually keeping away from houses for the
most part, and rather seldom approaching swamps and watersides, but
is fond of daily dust baths in country roads.
[Edward
Howe Forbush]
__________
»Stupid
High School Kids (and Teachers) Freak Out Over Wikipedia Blackout
-----
Paula
Deen Is a Greasy Villain
-----
Secretary
of State Hillary Clinton today appointed basketball legend Kareem
Abdul-Jabar as a State Department Cultural Ambassador.
-----
Did
Newt Gingrich Out Brit Hume’s Dead Gay Son?
Out
of nowhere, the Miami Herald has dusted off and expanded upon one of
Washington's oldest and juiciest political rumors: The one about a
rising young beltway journalist and his gay affair with a powerful
GOP congressman, and how the journalist shot himself in the head when
his lover's political rival threatened to out them. According to the
Herald, that rival may have been Newt Gingrich.
The
rumor, in brief, is as follows: In the summer of 1997, the Hill's
Sandy Hume—the then-28-year-old son of Fox News' Brit Hume—broke
a blockbuster story about four GOP congressman who plotted, and
failed, to overthrow Newt Gingrich as Speaker. One of those men was
Bill Paxon, a New York Republican who was married to fellow
Congresswoman Susan Molinari. Another of the plotters, Majority
Leader Dick Armey, scuttled the coup when he learned that Paxon, and
not he, would replace Gingrich. Armey later disavowed the whole
attempt and claimed not to have been involved.
A
few months later, in February 1998, Paxon launched an attempt to
unseat Armey from his leadership position. Just days later, Sandy
Hume killed himself with a gunshot to the head. Just days after that,
Paxon suddenly and inexplicably resigned and never returned to public
life. Almost immediately, rumors began flying that Hume and Paxon had
been having an affair, and that Armey had threatened to out them.
Hence the suicide and the sudden resignation. The theory was common
knowledge among the D.C. press corps, but it never made it to print
(as far as I can tell) beyond the dark corners of the internet and an
angry passage, years later, in Joe Scarborough's Rome Wasn't Burnt in
a Day accusing Armey of smearing Hume.
-----
Girl,
6, survives on crisps for 5 days after mum abandons her
A
sobbing girl of six was left home alone for five days in a cold and
disgusting flat.
-----
Casey
Anthony’s Hideout?
Sources
tell Diane Dimond she may have been given sanctuary at a church in
Florida.
-----
Newt's
Newest "Elite": Subway Riders
Courtesy
of Matt Yglesias, I read this hilarious Newt Gingrich declaration of
cultural war …
-----
ORGIES!
DRUGS! 3-WAYS! BRITNEY SPEARS BODYGUARD TELLS ALL
-----
ANTHONY
BOURDAIN
RIPS
Paula Deen --
She's
a Diabetic Scam Artist!
Anthony
Bourdain is putting Paula Deen ON BLAST -- mocking the butter-loving
chef for poisoning Americans with unhealthy food ... and now trying
to profit off of their illness.
In
an ultra-transparent Twitter attack -- Bourdain wrote, "Thinking
of getting into the leg-breaking business, so I can profitably sell
crutches later."
The
"Kitchen Confidential" author is presumably pissed that
Deen -- who built an empire off her high-fat, high-sugar recipes --
announced she has diabetes ... and subsequently revealed she's become
a paid spokeswoman for a diabetes medication.
-----
BAT
BOY SELLS VACATION CAVE
-----
Everything
About Rick Santorum Is Gross, Like His ‘Creamcup Trust’
Today’s
Santorum scandal du jour — which means “a frothy mix, etc.,” in
Santorum’s native language of Gay Obsessed — involves the various
mansions he purchases through shady mortgages, in Virginia. But
really, did he need to name his sketchy tax dodge “The Creamcup
Trust,” and did he have to involve somebody named “James Sack”?
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