April.
12 [1852].
It
was very pleasant to come out on the railroad in this gentle rain.
The track, laid in gray sand, looks best at such a time, with the
rails all wet. The factory bridge, seen through the mist, is
agreeably indistinct, seen against a dark-grayish pine wood. I should
not know there was a bridge there, if I had not been there. The dark
line made by its shaded under side is most that I see here spanning
the road; the rails are quite indistinct. We love to see things thus
with a certain indistinctness.
I
am made somewhat sad this afternoon by the coarseness and vulgarity
of my companion, because he is one with whom I have made myself
intimate. He inclines latterly to speak with coarse jesting of facts
which should always be treated with delicacy and reverence. I lose my
respect for the man who can make the mystery of sex the subject of a
coarse jest, yet, when you speak earnestly and seriously on the
subject, is silent. I feel that this is to be truly irreligious.
Whatever may befall me, I trust that I may never lose my respect for
purity in others.
[Thoreau,
JOURNAL]
==========
KEFIR
is closely related to yogurt, but with even stronger healthful
properties. The term KEFIR is … Turkish … Although you can buy a
commercial product labeled as ‘kefir’ in some health food stores,
this is basically a cultured milk drink that does not use actual
kefir starter. True kefir can be made only with a culture of kefir
grains, which are small colonies of friendly bacteria and yeasts. All
kefir grains come from an original mother culture with very ancient
origins. The grains were first used many centuries ago in the
Caucasus region of Central Asia, where residents still consider kefir
an important food staple, and where they enjoy some of the longest
life expectancies in the world. … its constituent organisms are an
extremely symbiotic community of yeasts and bacteria that exhibit
strong probiotic qualities and are capable of beneficially colonizing
the human gastro-intestinal tract.
[FRESH
FOOD FROM SMALL SPACES]
==========
In
1881 Tolstoy had started work on a new novella which would in time
receive the title ‘The Death of Ivan Ilych’. He had put it aside
in 1883, but would return to work on it the following year …
==========
DECUMARIA
is a genus of only two known species, one native to the southeastern
USA, the other to central China. The name comes from the Latin
decimus, tenth, and
alludes to the fact that the petals, stamens and other parts of the
flower are grouped in tens or multiples of ten. They are climbing
shrubs which cling by aerial roots in the same way as ivy and are
closely related to Hydrangea, except
that the flowers are fertile, not partially sterile ... neither is
common in cultivation.
[THE
VANISHING GARDEN]
==========
A
LUSHER or more bountiful foraging area would be hard to find than the
Finger Lakes Region of New York. Anyone who goes hungry around there
needs either more knowledge or the energy to use it! …
One
of the most conspicuous wild plants of the area was the coarse,
rough, jointed charlock or wild radish (Raphanus
raphanistrum), growing up to
three feet high, with stems thicker than your finger. I’ve known
this plant a long time but was always unable to find much use for it.
Although a close relative of our garden radish, it doesn’t produce
an edible root. Sometimes I’ve added a few leaves to a mixed wild
pot of cooked green vegetables, but they’re rather rough and hairy,
quite bitter, and generally unattractive.
My
friend and I took a closer look at this plant. The yellowish buds
that would soon be golden, four-petaled flowers were just showing. We
decided to try these bud-clusters cooked with broccoli, but first
tasted them raw and discovered that they had a delightful pungency
like the hot mustard usually served with Chinese food. These would
perk up otherwise dull salads and sandwiches. Finely chopped and
mixed with butter, they made a complete sandwich spread, better than
most herb butters I have tasted. Cooked, the buds were edible but
nothing to brag about.
Breaking
those thick stems near the top of the plant where they were newly
grown, we found them tender, solid, and succulent inside, with a
rather rough cortex that peeled off easily. The peeled stems were a
translucent green, tender, juicy, and mildly pungent. They would make
a good addition to a tossed salad. Boiled only five minutes in salted
water, then seasoned with butter, they made a palatable cooked
vegetable.
[Euell
Gibbons]
==========
The
SWAMP SPARROW is not a public character. He will never be popular or
notorious. He is too retiring to be much in the public eye, and too
fond of the impassable bog and morass to have much human company; and
so he comes and goes unheralded and to most people unknown. He is the
dark little bird that fusses about in the muck when spring floods
have overflowed the wood roads, or slips through the grasses on
marsh-lined shores of slow-flowing, muddy rivers. Any watery, muddy,
bushy, grassy place where rank marsh grasses, sedges and reeds grow –
any such bog or slough where a man will need long rubber boots to get
about – is good enough for Swamp Sparrows. In such places they
build their nests. But in migration they may appear almost anywhere,
though seldom distinctly seen and recognized by ordinary observers,
because of their retiring habits. When they are looked for, they
sneak about, mostly under cover, and hardly show themselves
sufficiently for identification, but if the observer apparently takes
no interest in their whereabouts and sits quietly down, curiosity may
overcome their suspicions and bring them into view.
[Edward
Howe Forbush]
==========
If
it be true that the carcass of the mammoth was imbedded in pure ice,
there
are two ways in which it may have been frozen in. We may suppose
the
animal to have been overwhelmed by drift snow. I have been informed
by
Dr. Richardson, that, in the northern parts of America, comprising
regions
now inhabited by many herbivorous quadrupeds, the drift snow is
often
converted into permanent glaciers. It is commonly blown over the
edges
of steep cliffs, so as to form an inclined talus hundreds of feet
high;
and when a thaw commences, torrents rush from the land, and throw
down
from the top of the cliff alluvial soil and gravel. This new soil
soon
becomes covered with vegetation, and protects the foundation of
snow
from the rays of the sun. Water occasionally penetrates into the
crevices
and pores of the snow; but, as it soon freezes again, it serves
the
more rapidly to consolidate the mass into a compact iceberg. It may
sometimes
happen that cattle grazing in a valley at the base of such
cliffs,
on the borders of a sea or river, may be overwhelmed, and at
length
inclosed in solid ice, and then transported towards the polar
regions.
Or a herd of mammoths returning from their summer pastures in
the
north, may have been surprised, while crossing a stream, by the
sudden
congelation of the waters. The missionary Huc relates, in his
travels
in Thibet in 1846, that, after many of his party had been frozen
to
death, they pitched their tents on the banks of the Mouroui-Ousson
(which
lower down becomes the famous Blue River), and saw from their
encampment
"some black shapeless objects ranged in file across the
stream.
As they advanced nearer no change either in form or distinctness
was
apparent; nor was it till they were quite close, that they
recognized
in them a troop of the wild oxen, called Yak by the
Thibetans.
There were more than fifty of them incrusted in the ice.
No
doubt they had tried to swim across at the moment of congelation, and
had
been unable to disengage themselves. Their beautiful heads,
surmounted
by huge horns, were still above the surface, but their bodies
were
held fast in the ice, which was so transparent that the position of
the
imprudent beasts was easily distinguishable; they looked as if still
swimming,
but the eagles and ravens had pecked out their eyes."
[Charles
Lyell, PRINCIPLES OF GEOLOGY]
==========
Cats
do not copulate with
a
rearward presentment on the part of the female, but the male stands
erect
and the female puts herself underneath him; and, by the way,
the
female cat is peculiarly lecherous, and wheedles the male on to
sexual
commerce, and caterwauls during the operation. Camels copulate
with
the female in a sitting posture, and the male straddles over
and
covers her, not with the hinder presentment on the female's part
but
like the other quadrupeds mentioned above, and they pass the whole
day
long in the operation; when thus engaged they retire to lonely
spots,
and none but their keeper dare approach them. And, be it observed,
the
penis of the camel is so sinewy that bow-strings are manufactured
out
of it. Elephants, also, copulate in lonely places, and especially
by
river-sides in their usual haunts; the female squats down, and
straddles
with her legs, and the male mounts and covers her. The seal
covers
like all opisthuretic animals, and in this species the copulation
extends
over a lengthened time, as is the case with the dog and bitch;
and
the penis in the male seal is exceptionally large.
[Aristotle,
HISTORIA ANIMALIUM]
==========
"Injun
Joe," "Jimmy Finn," and "General Gaines"
were prominent and very
intemperate
ne'er-do-weels in Hannibal two generations ago. Plenty of
grayheads
there remember them to this day, and can tell you about them.
Isn't
it curious that two "town drunkards" and one half-breed
loafer
should
leave behind them, in a remote Missourian village, a fame a
hundred
times greater and several hundred times more particularized in
the
matter of definite facts than Shakespeare left behind him in the
village
where he had lived the half of his lifetime?
End
of the Project Gutenberg EBook of WHAT IS MAN? AND OTHER STORIES, by
Mark
Twain
__________
George
Lewis, NBC News correspondent writes …
“One
more thing.” It’s something the late Steve Jobs used to say as
he was introducing Apple’s latest gadgets, always saving the big
surprise for the end of his presentation.
As
I end 42 years at NBC News, they’ve asked me to write “one more
thing” about my incredible journey — a career that’s taken me
to all 50 states, 30-some countries and all of Earth’s continents
with the exception of Antarctica. (Going there is on my bucket list
of places to see.)
-----
Sad
Taylor Swift Takes A Sad Stroll In The Rain
What
do you suppose she’s listening to? Surely it’s got to be Adele’s
“Someone Like You” or something equally as tragic, right? … "Oh
look, a sad swan."
-----
Photos
That Show Joe Biden Is The Drunk Uncle Of The United States
And
these are just from last night's State Of The Union. He points! He
close-talks! He's handsy!
-----
Our
old pal to the South, retired Cuban dictator Fidel Castro, has been
watching these Republican debates, including the most recent one in
which the candidates talked about Fidel Castro going to Hell. He has
not been impressed, writing in an editorial that "the selection
of a Republican candidate for the presidency of this globalized and
expansive empire is - and I mean this seriously - the greatest
competition of idiocy and ignorance that has ever been."
-----
Guess
what is one of Kate Bush's favorite art forms? Right: shadow
puppetry.
-----
Hey,
everybody, have you heard the good news? If Newt Gingrich is elected
president, we can all go live on the moon! Cool…wait, what? Yep,
here's what the man said earlier today:
‘By
the end of my second term, we will have the first permanent base on
the moon and it will be American.’
-----
"Dynasty"
star JAMES FARENTINO who made headlines for his 1994 conviction for
stalking FRANK SINATRA’s daughter has died suddenly at 73.
AP
reported Farentino, who appeared in tons of movies and television
shows, has died of heart failure after a long illness at Cedars-Sinai
Hospital on Tuesday.
Among
his many films Farentino costarred alongside Kirk Douglas and Martin
Sheen in sci-fi film "The Final Countdown" where an
aircraft carrier traveled back through time in an attempt to stop the
bombing of Pearl Harbor.
Farentino
netted a Golden Globe as "Most Promising Newcomer" 1967 for
his perf in "The Pad and How to Use It."
-----
'He
was a really cool guy:' Actor who voiced Lost in Space robot, Dick
Tufeld, dies aged 85
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