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PHOTO OF THE DAY

Down on the farm

by Connetta Jean

Photo by Phil Innes

“I don’t like Poetry”

Said the husband to the wife..

“I’ve no time for such things

I live a Farmers life”

But the wife said “dear husband”

“you live a poets poem’

do you not reap the harvest

of seeds by which you’ve sown?

I’ve seen you bow your head in thanks

when God answered prayers for rain

i’ve seen your eyes shine with pride

with every baby calf you name”

” I guess poetrys okay” he said

as he kissed that farmers wife

and silently he thanked the Lord

she saw poetry in their life….

PASSAGES

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Text selections by Vermont Views

A state of war only serves as an excuse for domestic tyranny.

[Caption: Solzhenitsyn in Vermont, where he lived while in the West.]

Hastiness and superficiality are the psychic diseases of the 20th century, and more than anywhere else this disease is reflected in the press.

Violence can only be concealed by a lie, and the lie can only be maintained by violence.

The battleline between good and evil runs through the heart of every man.

Own only what you can always carry with you: know languages, know countries, know people. Let your memory be your travel bag.

Literature that is not the breath of contemporary society, that dares not transmit the pains and fears of that society, that does not warn in time against threatening moral and social dangers — such literature does not deserve the name of literature; it is only a façade. Such literature loses the confidence of its own people, and its published works are used as wastepaper instead of being read.

In our country the lie has become not just a moral category but a pillar of the State.

For us in Russia, communism is a dead dog, while, for many people in the West, it is still a living lion.

Read more PASSAGES >>>

Recent Passages By: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Joan Didion, Pablo Casals, Geoffrey Chaucer, Muddy Waters, Aretha Franklin, Dorothy Maclean, Pauline Kael, John McCain, Renata Adler, Marshall McLuhan, V. S. Naipaul, Candice Bergen, Kingsley Amis, Jerry Lee Lewis, Jiddu Krishnamurti, Annie Besant, Nasreddin, Lionel Trilling, Peter Dinklage Read their work here

NOT QUITE THE THING

Sponsored by Delectable Mountain Cloth

Caption It!

MM Kizi

Series 26 images

SHORTS

About 75%

Vermont Views

STATISTIC: The just-released 2017 civics survey conducted by the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania found, among other things:

More than a third of American adults (37 percent) can’t name any of the rights guaranteed under the First Amendment.

Only a quarter of American adults (26 percent) can name all three branches of government.

More than half of American adults (53 percent) incorrectly think it is accurate to say that immigrants who are here illegally do not have any rights under the U.S. Constitution.

STATISTIC: Last year’s survey by the Annenberg center found:

Nearly 4 in 10 (39 percent) incorrectly said the Constitution gives the president the power to declare war. Just more than half (54 percent) knew the Constitution gives Congress the power to declare war.

A vast majority (83 percent) correctly said the Constitution gives Congress the power to raise taxes.

A majority (77 percent) know the Constitution says that Congress cannot establish an official religion — though almost 1 in 10 agreed with the statement that the Constitution says, “Congress can outlaw atheism because the United States is one country under God.”

Read More shorts

VERMONT DIARY

Has Bean Has Travelled

Editorial

I am copying all Vermont Views Columnists, plus friends of the magazine, and issuing a challenge and invitation on behalf of the FOODISH column to write up your own favorite winter season dish — plus an anecdote of why you chose it.

Likely we will have a big Scandinavian contribution this year from friends of friends of family, and I wonder if we could all follow a format and tail your recipe with some anecdote, however long, of why you like this dish? Here is a sample entry for format reasons plus my own anecdote:—

Notes (Prep time plus cook time.)

Prep

Cook

Plating notes

Anecdote

As a young man I found myself in a delightful old farmhouse in Sussex, England, one summer, one which had bagged figs in the tree in the garden, and over which there were contrails such as there were in WWII — and  which had a Rayburn stove, and for transport I had a pre WWI sit up and beg type one gear black bicycle, with which I could sport around, visit Blake's house nearby, also the Roman town of Chichester, and the castle town of Arundel.

This was my first experience of cooking for myself and for another, a titled older lady who I was 'keeping an eye on.'

Now and again visitors would appear — Lady Goodwood in her Bentley, with attendants, driver, et ca, a lady who owned substantial chunks of Africa at the time, to whom I served tea and to her question of 'who I was' I said 'Innes' which I think she took as being Viscount Innes, such as are responses this way in England, and which was received equitably without demurrer. 

Then came the wife of the Bishop of Puerto Rico — himself was at a conference in Canterbury, and she, bored, came to visit. To visit and incidentally to assess my cooking skills, including baked beans which I had made some from a can, which is the buried subject of this thread. 

She went off to town and bought all sorts of things, including beans which she cooked on the stove top for best part of the day, before immersing them into a large oven pan, and adding things I hardly know the names of, but including sweet peppers, chilies, considerable amounts of mustard, fresh tomatoes, bacon, 'exotic' herbs' and as I say, other things unknown to me by shape, name or previous contact thereof. This all went into the oven of the AGGA the next day to then emerge 6 hours later to the reprise, "those are baked beans."

And they were extraordinary, and probably sparked my interest in cooking things which didn't come in cans or from factories.

<extract> Read More Vermont Diary >>>

MEANDERINGS

Apache foggy morning

Charles Monette

Early autumn, October 9th, a ‘patchy fog’ stilled the woods as I entered the trailhead.  Weather describers had labeled their forecast ‘Patchy Fog’ Monday night till mid-morning Tuesday.  But it wasn’t ‘patchy’!  A uniform, levelheaded expanse was hovering in the forest.  More, the remnants of a drizzling mist earlier that morning.  The trees, the leaves, the rocks, everything was enveloped in a miasma of moist air. 

My Apache fog was slowly lifting as I sauntered off into the damp quiet of an Indian summer day.  Almost one 3rd through October days, this Fall’s foliage had just begun.  Dampened yellow and dead brown leaves lay intermingled on the trail creating a poor man’s yellow brick road.  The yellow glowed brightly over brown.  Sopping wet throughout.

Small trees were drooping wet, hanging over ever so slightly, with raindrops weighting each pale green leaf.  Ferns aside the trail offered a mix of green and gold frond that had begun to decolor.  Deep verdant and vibrant moss clung firmly, embedded on dead logs.

                                   Musing Math, calculating

   I realized a 1.5 C future must = net-zero greenhouse gas emissions

  but what about runaway feedbanks of die-back tropical rainforests?

                 what of the release of methane rich permafrost?

                               in the midst of the catastrophic

             avoidance requires radical change and climate justice

                                           Are you ready?

Looking up, I spied some wet white bark uncoiling in a glen of birch trees.  Birds were singing, but wildlife must’ve been sleeping in.

<extract> Read more of this and other articles by Charles Monette >>>

LOVE IN ACTION

Spiritual Smorgasbord for Soul Sisters

Elizabeth Hill

Every day is a journey, and the journey itself is home.

~ Matsuo Basho

I arrived more than three hours later than scheduled that Thursday evening, after the flight from Toronto to London Ontario was cancelled due to an air traffic control issue.

Amidst some chaos at the re-booking counter, I was told the next available flight would be the following day. The only same-day transport to my friend Nancy’s place was to catch two separate train rides that would take me to Central London.

A young Polish woman named Maggie asked me if we could go together, as we would need to hurry to make it to the first train, and our instructions from the airline person were rather vague. We power-walked almost the full length of the terminal, zoomed across moving walkways—our wheeled luggage in tow—then pretty much jogged up escalators to get to the first train. It was packed, we were pooped, but we both got seats.

I’m telling this because, the whole time Maggie and I were kickin’ up dust, I felt certain (to borrow a phrase from Findhorn’s founder, Eileen Caddy) “All is very, very well.” In fact, the travel delay allowed my friend Nancy to complete her workday, plus Maggie and I not only got a great workout, we also became instant friends, exchanging contact information so we can stay in touch.

Nancy picked me up at the train station, and then we headed to a restaurant she had recommended. Before exiting the car, we took a moment to express gratitude for this weekend we had planned together, and also to invite the energy of The Transformation Game to be with us throughout the weekend.

Nancy and I first met while living at Findhorn in Scotland. It was from there that The Transformation Game was created. Over time, it has become a treasured globally recognized tool for fostering personal and group growth, awakening insights, and assisting with decision-making. Produced in numerous languages, it is available at the following link: https://www.innerlinks.com/

While eating dinner, a fly kept circling around us both.

Extract Read More Elizabeth Hill >>>

Finnish Fandango

BUT (YOU SAY) IT'S ONLY A BOOK !

Anneli Karniala

   Some selected quotes by Joan Didion are presented in the "Passages" section of this magazine. And speaking of her, I understand she's very perceptive about many things. However, I had such a weird experience with one of her books, that I cringe from referred reference to her! And I'll tell you why, before you even say, "Oh, don't bother"!

   My father lived here with me for over four years before he died. I took care of him, food, transport, doctor visits, cleaning, plus I worked my nursing job. The year after he died, which brought us to 2007, I got a package in the mail. It was Joan Didion's book, "The Year of Magical Thinking", along with an envelope and card from a guy I'll call Q., who lived somewhere out West, at least at that time, as I recall.

    We had both been in the same class in Elementary School here in 5th and 6th grade, also in Junior High (7th and 8th grade). After that, he and his family moved away. So I had never seen him or had contact with him since 8th grade, some 40+ years earlier, and I really only knew him as a schoolboy for a few years.

   This Q. was a smart kid, yes. A "Mr. Perfectly Dressed", always in an ironed white shirt and pressed trousers --- unlike what other boys wore to school in 1957-60.  I didn't like his grin, and I just did not like him at all...So I thought, what the hell was he up to, sending me something, popping out of history from elementary and junior high school like that.  And where did he have my street address from. (Of course, I have since discovered that one can find all manner of addresses on the Internet!)

   I read his short note which was very fishy indeed -- he professed to be researching his family's gravesites after his mother had at that time recently died, and "came across" the obituary of my father the year before. He says "it occurred to" him to send me the book...because it had helped HIM to recognize some of the same experiences that Joan Didion wrote about in the book.

   Unbelievable .... This Q. knew absolutely squat about me, my life, my father, my grieving at the time, etc. And whether or not this book would be meaningful to me. And did I even want to see if I had some of the same experiences as the author and him? How could he possibly know that answer. In fact, I had no need to read about other's grief during my own; it gave me no solace whatsoever.

Extract Read more Anneli Karniala

WRITE WALK

Where’s the Gravy?

Susan Cruickshank

The biblical narrative, ‘Tower of Babel,’ speaks of a time when ‘the whole earth had one language and used the same words.’* It was after Noah and the great flood, when enough time had passed that pride once again had run amok, and frail egos puffed with self-importance. It was out of this hubris that the idea to build a tower to the sky and play God was brewed and work began in earnest. It is a cautionary tale of human arrogance and God’s reckoning. 

For in a moment, God relinquished the gifting of complete understanding of the other by scrambling language and making it impossible to communicate.

Babel. [Illus. from Psychology Today]

I’ve wondered in recent years, when I misunderstand someone’s words completely, or they have misunderstood me with mine, whether an updated form of Babel is now plaguing our world. A 2.0 version, more insidious in nature and therefore more difficult to detect. Where language’s visual symbols––words spoken or on the page––remain unchanged, lulling us into a false confidence that we are understanding what is being said, as well as being understood. The reality, however, is that there is often a great chasm between us of confused meaning.

The salience of this theory gelled for me recently through the unremarkable subject of dog food location. This trivial matter led to a complete communication breakdown. But because the concern was innocuous, emotions remained level, which made the real issue easier to notice: the same word didn’t mean the same thing to me as it did to somebody else.

I had landed in the outdoorsy town of Peterborough, Ontario, the Brattleboro of the

North, to dog-sit two senior Golden Retrievers for five weeks.

<Extract> Read More Susan Cruickshank >>>

September 2018

George Harvey

Science and Technology:

¶ “Flood frequency of world’s largest river has increased fivefold, study finds” • Flooding on the Amazon River has increased fivefold over the last two or three decades, a new study has found. Analysis of more than 100 years of river level records from the Amazon showed that both floods and droughts had become more frequent. [The Independent]

World:

¶ “SIMEC Atlantis Unveils World’s Largest Tidal Turbine” • Tidal turbine maker SIMEC Atlantis Energy unveiled designs for what may be the world’s largest single-rotor tidal turbine, the 2-MW AR2000. SIMEC Atlantis’s 1.5-MW turbines are used at the world’s largest tidal stream away, the 6-MW MeyGen array off the north of Scotland. [CleanTechnica]

¶ Nearly 400 investors, with assets worth $32 trillion, announced The Investor Agenda, a first-of-its-kind global agenda aimed to accelerate and scale-up actions critical to meeting the goals of the Paris Agreement. [CleanTechnica]

¶ “Electric For All Campaign From Volkswagen – 10 Million EVs Based On MEB Platform” • Volkswagen officially launched its “Electric For All” campaign this week with the official introduction of its MEB platform. The platform is where the powertrain, suspension, brakes, and other vital components all come together. [CleanTechnica]

Illustrated:— VW MEB platform

¶ “Renewables reach 37-year high” • Strong hydro and wind generation saw 85% of the New Zealand’s electricity produced from renewables in the June quarter, government data shows. The country has a target to achieve 90% renewable power by 2025. The Labour-led coalition has suggested going to 100% 2035. [Newsroom]

US:

¶ “Boise City Aims At 100% Renewable By 2030 For Municipal Operations” • The City of Boise has joined a growing list of cities across the country that have committed to transitioning to 100% renewable energy sources. The Boise city facilities are already fueled by a combination of renewable and non-renewable sources. [Boise State Public Radio]

¶ “Renewable energy proposition draws millions of dollars in campaign spending” • Arizona Prop 127 is an initiative to amend the state constitution to require power utilities to get more of their electricity from renewable resources. Both supporters and opponents are currently engaged in a fierce and expensive media battle. [Tucson Local Media]

¶ “Jacksonville utility company wants federal regulators to intervene on Plant Vogtle dispute” • Jacksonville Electric Authority asked federal energy regulators to intervene in its dispute with a Georgia electric agency over an agreement requiring Jacksonville’s ratepayers to help build two nuclear reactors in Georgia. [Savannah Morning News]

<extract> Read More World & US Energy News

Why I chose to look ugly, and the reasoning behind it.

Susan Polgar

Editorial note: The writer of this letter is Susan Polgar who became the Women’s World Chess Champion, pictured with Mikhail Tal, another chess world champion

Here are the reasonings behind it, something I never talked about.

When I was a young chess player, I consciously tried to look as plain and unattractive as possible. Most people never knew why. I never really talked about it. There were 2 main reasons:

1) It is because I was tired of being sexually harassed and hit on constantly by male chess players.

I was often the only girl in all-men chess tournaments (In fact, FIDE severely punished me by taking away my world #1 ranking for choosing to play only against men at that time. I was the only woman in chess history to be punished for wanting to play and beat male chess players). And the behavior of some of these male chess players was absolutely appalling. It sometimes became dangerous.

I wanted to prove myself on the board. I could not care less what people think about how I looked. I was NOT there to "pick up" men. I was always very thankful that my parents (especially my Mother) were always with me at tournaments to try to protect me. It is better today but still bad at times.

2) We were so poor that we had no money for fancy clothes.

Now, I can just be me. So no, most men cannot understand what many girls/women have to endure in chess, especially back then. Sexism and discrimination in chess still exist today, just not as much. This is why I wrote this

“WHY IS THERE A NEED FOR SOME ALL-GIRLS' OR WOMEN’S CHESS TOURNAMENTS?” This is probably one of the top 5 questions I have most often been asked:—

Many girls/women need to be able to set their feet in chess before they can fly. I took this problem head on for decades, and suffered so many severe consequences, so that girls and women of this and future generations can have an open path to bigger heights if they choose to. I am still being blacklisted by many today for exposing the real and serious problems in the sport I love and devoted my entire life to.

Knowing what I had to go through, and the price I had to pay, I would still do it again. It is a fight worth taking on for countless girls and women out there around the world.

Read more letters to Vermont Views >>>

SCREENplay

The Wife

Lawrence Klepp

The Nobel Prize for Literature must be considered a kind of practical joke, played by the usually humorless Swedes on a gullible literary world that eagerly and mistakenly covets it. Among the writers who did not win it: Tolstoy, Ibsen, Twain, Conrad, Wells, Henry James, Proust, Joyce, Dreiser, Lawrence, Cather, Wharton, Woolf, Frost, Stevens, Auden, Nabokov, Borges. Among those who did: Sully Prudhomme, Henryk Sienkiewicz, Wladyslaw Raymont, J.V. Jensen, Frans Sillanpää, and a few dozen other people you’ve never heard of. Deserving writers do sometimes get it, but if prizes were given for prizes, the Nobel Prize for Literature would win the Nobel Prize for Unforced Errors.

In The Wife, a superb movie with an unforgettable performance by Glenn Close, and the first English-language film by the Swedish director Bjorn Runge, the joke becomes transcendent irony. The famous American novelist who wins the prize didn’t really write any of his novels. On his own, he couldn’t even have gotten them published. His wife secretly did all the real writing.

I’m not committing a spoiler by telling you this, because the early hints of it solidify into certainty before the movie is half over. What makes the movie suspenseful is the ticking time bomb of the wife’s stifled ambitions, injured dignity, and cumulative resentment, registered at first only in facial expressions that barely break the surface of her reserved, placid demeanor. It is a very well-written movie, with a strong screenplay by Jane Anderson based on a novel of the same title by Meg Wolitzer, but Close carries it home with a performance that should get her the Oscar that she should already have won (the Nobels aren’t the only dubious awards).

The movie starts in the middle of the night, at a big house in Connecticut, where Joe Castleman (Jonathan Pryce), a bearded, aging, volatile American novelist, can’t sleep because he’s been nominated for the Nobel and the call would have to come on this night. If he doesn’t get it, he says to his wife, Joan, to hell with it—they’ll just hide out in a cabin in Maine to avoid the consolation calls.

<extract> Read More SCREENplay

Roasted Brussels Sprouts with Dates and Balsamic Vinegar

Real food from scratch

Notes

10 minutes prep time plus about 30 mins cook time. Try this basic recipe then innovate with added honey, for example.

Ingredients

Brussels Sprouts

Dates

Garlic cloves

Balsamic vinegar

Olive Oil

Prep

Reduce a cup of balsamic vinegar over medium low heat to about half a cup. Vinegar should begin to be syrupy. Refrigerate if you are cooking ahead.

By all means start by turning on the oven to 350 and start the balsamic reduction.

At the same time trim and cut in half the sprouts, toss in a bowl with half a cup of olive oil.

Smash a few cloves of garlic into splinters, sauté, add to sprouts

Cut a handful of dates into slivers. Or figs. Or dried plums...

Cook

You won’t need to coat the baking tray, roast brussels and garlic for about 30 mins at 350, or for crispy, start at 400 for 10 minutes, and then cook 30 mins at 350.

Combine cooked sprouts, garlic, dates and as much of the balsamic as you like, serve hot or cold.

Read more FOODISH

THE FIRST GLASS

Typewriter Days

Vincent Panella

Once long ago I needed a job. A friend had just quit as a reporter for a large Midwest newspaper and he suggested I take his place. I'd never worked as a news reporter, but I'd taken a J-School course and had recently written a piece about racing pigeons and their uncanny ability to return home from great distances at high speeds.

This friend put in a word to the managing editor and gave him my pigeon story. I soon found myself in the man's office. He'd been a combat photographer in the Second World War and the newspaper, with a circulation of fifty-thousand, was noted for the quality of its photographs. As I took a seat the editor was standing over a light table examining negatives with a magnifying glass. After ignoring me for a few minutes he moved to his desk. He was dressed in a carefully mismatched shirt and tie. His scowl was perpetual, and he held up my pigeon article without saying whether he liked it.

 "I'll give you a chance and put you on Police Beat. If you can't do the job you're out the door."

 Fair enough.

The next morning I followed the police reporter on his rounds. His name was Jim, last name unimportant, and he started with calls to the hospital for condition reports on patients who'd been in the news. Then we got into his car and drove, first to the Fire Station for anything of interest, then to the County Sheriff's office, and finally the police station. Here the dispatcher handed over a thick ream of carbon copies, one for each complaint received in the last twenty-four hours. Jim quickly leafed through the carbons and made notes on potential stories. We then met with the publicity officer and Jim asked about each incident he'd selected.

We returned to the newsroom with four stories. These were typewriter days, and Jim said to the city editor, "Four stories, eight takes," a 'take' being a single page of triple-spaced type. This information was immediately conveyed to the composing room downstairs so they could allow for the appropriate space in the Police Beat column. Noon deadline was ten minutes away.

<extract>  Read More >>>

OLD LADY BLOG

The Savage Sparkler, Alice Aycock, 1981, steel, sheet metal, heating coils, florescent lights, motors and fans

Toni Ortner

From a forthcoming title: Focused Light from a Different Star —  In response to women artists of the last two centuries and the work they produced.

What kind of machine is this?

We recognize the parts: sheet metal   heating coils    motors   fans.

Florescent strings of lights flash on and off.

There are no switches.

The turbine is huge but does not turn.

There are no signs.

Brown and green look bland.

This is not a geometry we understand.

We see what appears to be a wire ladder leading in but no bench on which to sit.

No buttons or levers.

Senses reel inside ring after ring of glinting steel.

Trapped in a metal labyrinth without a thread

an increasing sense of dead     of dread.

Read More Toni Ortner >>>

WATER’S EDGE

A Touch is All it Takes

Nicola Metcalf

As I sit on the deck writing, with a comforting cup of tea in front of me, the clutching feeling in my chest begins to soften. My daughter’s departure for college has finally happened. It has been another childbirth, one with a long, long labor. During senior year, we lived through the college application process and attended final concerts, events and productions. All of it culminated in a joyous high school graduation.  Throughout, we arm-wrestled over who got to use the car and what time she would be home. Summer came and was filled with babysitting jobs, hosting a delightful French exchange student, and many fun, short trips around New England. Difficult conversations about our relationship and my recent divorce from her father challenged us. I swung from wanting her to leave right away, to dreading the inevitable. Finally, the days of packing and preparations to leave were upon us. Now I am home, exhausted after the 11 hour road trip to Oberlin.

My daughter has left. My heart is bereft…feeling like a cleaving of some part of my soul. I wonder how anyone ever manages to lose a child who has died. This clearly is not that. But loss is what I feel most intensely the first 48 hours after returning home. It surrounds and saturates me as I walk through the house like an open wound with no place to go, sobbing, “My baby’s gone, my baby’s gone!”

“My baby” is a strongly independent soul, who at 18 months began choosing her own clothes to wear in the morning. While learning to climb the stairs, Fiona would say, “Thelf!  Thelf!” meaning “Self?  Self!” I’m doing it on my own. When learning to count, she started off, 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. “What happened to 5?” we would ask.  “I don’t do it that way,” she answered. Interesting to note that she did become a top math student. Just a few weeks ago, I tried to help apply sunscreen to her back. She refused, saying, “I need to be self-sufficient”. I have called Fiona my “just add water and mix” child, as it was easy to raise a do-it-yourselfer, especially one with her easy, cheerful joy and natural confidence. 

During our journey as we talked about the impending separation, I explained to her one way I have felt our bond. When she was an infant I would go out for a walk in the neighborhood and feel an energetic umbilical cord stretching around the block the entire mile.

<extract> Read more Nicola Metcalf >>>

GALLERY ONE

A photographic essay on Devon and Cornwall

Anne Lenten, Ed.

A series of photographs about ‘another place’ collected by the remarkable photographer Anne Lenten — Notes by Phil Innes

#6 Mining conditions haven’t changed much in 100 years

See more photos in this article Gallery One >>>

URBAN NATURALIST

Blink little fire-beetle, flash and glimmer

Lloyd Graf

A future story will deal with profound advances in basic understanding of genetics, metazoan development and other fundamental life processes, as well as strides in medical diagnosis and treatment made possible by use of light signals from purified firefly Luciferase and Luciferin as “reporters” to track the activities of key genes in cells, tissues and even in living creatures in vivo. For now I'll close by expanding on a deliciously gruesome saga of firefly deception and rapacity with which the majority of you are likely familiar: a grisly morsel of Firefly biology that has evoked the richly deserved term “femme fatale”. Read on, and I will dish up what the late, great Paul Harvey might have called: “The REST of the Photuris-Photinus story”.

It has been known for over 60 years that courting fireflies employ patterned exchanges of flashes to recruit partners for mating. Lust-driven males deliver a set number of flashes in a timed sequences, to which the appropriate receptive female responds with a single flash after a precise lag time. Then the 2 flies (generally) rush together, pitch woo, et voila, propagation of species! In the early 1960's James Lloyd, a grad student of the great Cornell entomologist Thomas Eisner' worked out and reported in 1964 a tale of perverted trans-genus firefly lust, deception and rapacity that has captured the public imagination through ensuing decades.

The relatively large females of firefly genus Photuris, Lloyd discovered, sometimes break from nighttime mating dances with Photuris males to enjoy a crispy high protein snack in the form of an unsuspecting (and relatively wimpy) male of a distinct genus, Photinus. The Photuris female uses cruel deception for the purpose. She recognizes a Photinus male's mating flash pattern and sends him a single flash response with the precise timing of a receptive Photinus female. The Photinus suitor then blunders into the sphere of the Photuris “femme fatale” (Lloyd's spot-on descriptor), who immediately gobbles him up with great gusto {nocturnal romantic doings being calorie-intensive ). There's also a reverse twist to this basic trickery: Photuris males sometimes mimic a Photinus male flash pattern in order to simulate an interspecific victim (more enticing than the boring Photuris he is in reality). The Phoinus male thus gains preferred access to his heart's desire, who presumably says “ Aww, whatever, as long as you're here anyway .....”

Part 2 of 3 — Extract Read More Lloyd Graf

Gardner Motor Cars

Featured Article

Gardner was an automobile maker based in St. Louis, Missouri between 1920 and 1931.

Without a dollar in his pocket, Russell E. Gardner left his home state of Tennessee for St. Louis in 1879. Three-and-a-half decades later he was a multi-millionaire. Gardner had made it big in St. Louis by manufacturing Banner buggies before the turn of the century, and unlike many wagon builders, was well aware of what the automobile age meant to his business. He got started by building new Chevrolet bodies and alongside, his company was building wagons. By 1915 this had led to the complete assembly of Chevrolets in St. Louis and Russell Gardner controlled all Chevrolet trade west of the Mississippi River.

Gardner sold his Chevrolet business to General Motors after his three sons entered the Navy during World War I. After the war, his sons decided to build their own automobiles. The Gardner Motor Company was established with Russell E. Gardner, Sr. as chairman of the board, Russell E. Gardner, Jr. as president, and Fred Gardner as vice-president. Their previous experience had been in the assembling of cars, so it was not surprising that the Gardner was assembled from bought-in parts. Lycoming engines were used throughout the years of production. A four-cylinder model with a 112-inch (2,800 mm) wheelbase and medium price was introduced in late 1919 as a 1920 model.

Sales in 1921 were 3800 cars, which increased in 1922 to 9000. In early 1924 Cannon Ball Baker established a new mid-winter transcontinental record from New York to Los Angeles in 4 days, 17 hours, and 8 minutes in a Gardner. They started to prepare to expand the product line and distributorship network. The plant's capacity was 40,000 cars annually, and by 1925 these included both sixes and eights. The fours were dropped in 1925, with both sixes and eights being produced in 1926 and 1927.

For 1927 and 1929 the eights were the only engines used. The interior of the Series 90 cars had many high-quality materials, such as silver-finished hardware, silk window curtains, walnut wood pieces and mohair upholstery (Series 75 and 80 did not have walnut in the interior.) All cars had a gas gauge and temp. gauge standard. During the summer of 1929, Gardner announced two "very important" automobile contracts. The first was with Sears, Roebuck and Company, who wanted Gardner to develop a new car to be sold by mail order. The other was with New Era Motors, to manufacture the front-wheel-drive Ruxton. With the stock market crash in late 1929, both deals were off.

<extract>  Read more yore

MONKEY’S CLOAK

You Can’t Do That

Charles Monette

infowars spout conspiracy

new broad brands of bigotry

go on ban me, I’ll sell survival gear

to help you live next year in fear

but baby, you can’t do that

free speech baby, I’m selling potent testosterone

take it to the dance, you’ll need a chaperon

heh be careful, be wary of ‘ploying your snuff

okay joker, my base be buying some more stuff

a timeworn populist tactic, rant & rave, soothe the static, create havoc

<extract> Read more Monkey’s Cloak

IN BETWEEN

Losing the Garden

Julia Ferrari

The brakes on my 18 year old car started making noise, reminding me that my car needs repair. Like a car, our bodies get older and need care. Things stop working as efficiently, and then eventually they can stop working altogether. Like our cars, our delicate, precious bodies are vehicles for experiencing this life; through them we are given the opportunity to be here, with our feet on the planet, here in our proverbial garden. Yet the garden, ultimately, is of our own making, and we learn through the struggle of all our work—inner work and outer work –what to do next. We attempt to find out who we are, we face who we are not, we take leaps of faith even in fear, and step forward … or not. 

Will we lose all we have, all we love? someday, yes we shall. …though we hope, not too soon.

I’ve been reviewing excerpts of John Milton’s “Paradise Lost.” There, through his poetry, the metaphor of our time here in the garden has been touching my thoughts. We taste the beauty of life through the privilege of being here, and the ultimate knowledge of our demise. Our bodies are not eternal, but perhaps the efforts we make, the trials we endure, the paths we take, (meaning the choices we make) will be.

It can be daunting to lose things—people, relationships, family—then to have to face new things,—new challenges, new beginnings. Here we are, developed human beings, with life seeming in control, ambling along, then all of a sudden, we’re not in control. Everything that seemed easy becomes new and (at times) difficult. We’re starting over again, this time with the perspective of our recent life tucked firmly under our arm, hoping that all can continue as it was. It may not, it likely will not. But new things grow to replace what has left. From the perspective of loss, I can speak to the occasions of my not easily embracing change…. when they cut down the willow across the street, my heart sank.  No longer could I look out at its lively, swaying ribbons of boughs moving on the slightest breeze. Song birds nested there in that tree which according to legend, embodied Kwan Yin’s compassionate tears. A poet I knew loved that tree, and now both are gone. Then I started to see that everything changes, just like the seasons in moving shades of céladon, chartreuse, olivander, citron, and harlequin, covering the hillsides in green, bearing fruit or leaf, then just as suddenly, in a season—gone, roots hibernating under ground till the cycle begins again.

[Image: Samuel Palmer ‘Holton’]

Extract Read more Julia Ferrari

AN A-MUSING LIFE

Letting It Flow

Nanci Bern

I have let my garden go this year. It is growing in wild abandon, ignoring my well placed circles and lines of plantings from years before. It is scoffing at my incessant weeding habits of the past. It has plummeted into extravagant plumes of plants that I had no idea lingered below just waiting to erupt. They sidled up to my perennials with a come hither sway to their leaves, and the party was on.

There is a feeling in this place now that is like an electrical charge. It is scented with the red hot of unexpressed passion. What a panorama for my grounding practice.

Grounding, to me, means to become present to where you are, and to expand toward what is beyond at the same moment. A metaphorical and energetic for some, myself included, cord comes from the very core of the earth and swoons with delight at the fragrance of the loamy touch of where we stand.

It winds through my feet, then my center and out the top of my head, where by now, in lilting strokes of anticipation, this waving ribbon will connect me to the great cosmic dance where it will twirl with the deftness of the accomplished hoofer of the universal ballroom experience. That sentence was as long as the string itself. Ah, solid ground, how you waltz me about. What could be better?

Oh, really big ocean boat, how you unearth me and spin me with your watery sentience. I am upon the deep, wet sea of the great unconscious. I sense Jung lurking about in the briny mist. My rock tethered interior is now unmoored and afloat on the waves. My feet become part of the waters of constant movement. I feel like I can sink into its depths instead of my usual travels through the solidness of earth. It rises to meet me, but this aqueous shindig is dancing me right into the walls, that for some reason keep moving.

My center of gravity has shifted. It needs to be as fluid as the waves that are tussling us about, ever so gently. Continued...

Read more Nanci Bern

ARCHETYPAL HIPPIE SPEAKS

Lessons We Must Learn

Jeri Rose

When I was in the cloud forest of Costa Rica, I experienced personally that the weather was near perfect. The trees were tall and spread their branches forming a roof above which was a continuous layer of clouds. If I got a bit cool, all I had to do was go where one of the giant trees had fallen breaking the continuity of the canopy, and as a result of that one tree being gone, the hole in the canopy produced a hole in the clouds above...the sun came through. I would sit on the trunk of the fallen tree and warm up and once warmed by that extremely hot sun, I would return to be under the canopy where the clouds also existed above and be comfortable again. That experience taught me so much about the inter-dependency of trees, sky and weather.

Read more Jeri Rose >>>

OPEN MIND

So what is Donald Trump

Offie Wortham

Your meeting with President Trump

Try to imagine that you are at a very high-class social gathering with your companion and you get into a conversation with Donald Trump. He will most likely be uninterested in events in either of your lives. He will tell you about his recent accomplishments, and plans for future adventures. If you are a male, he might lean over and whisper in your ear about how he would “like to grab the pussy” of that beautiful woman across the room. He might also brag about some of his many extra-marital affairs and how one of his mistresses, Marla Maples, was “The best sex I ever had.” If you are not shocked enough to excuse yourself from his presence, he will continue the one-sided conversation for perhaps another half hour.

He might talk about the success of his reality TV program, The Apprentice. Reviews now say that the ‘reality’ in Trump’s reality TV wasn’t real. “In every episode he acted out dramas of control over submissive contestants seeking his favor, wilting at his denial of it and fawning at his approval. Under Trump, winning was the road to serfdom. The subtext was pathos, not only on the part of the supplicants but also in the boss’s trademark phrase, ‘You’re fired.’ No matter how many people Trump rejected, he couldn’t force his own acceptance.”

According to the highly respected psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton, and hundreds of other mental health professionals, “President Trump exhibits malignant narcissism, a sociopathy, paranoia, a delusional detachment from reality, and more. He has delusional levels of grandiosity, impulsivity, and the compulsions of mental impairment. He has a detachment from reality”, and of “a hypomanic temperament” (restless, impatient, easily bored, supremely confident, impulsive, and risk-taking with a minuscule attention span). He is also an extreme present hedonist who lives in the moment “without much thought of any consequences of his actions or of the future” and says “whatever it will take to pump up his ego and to assuage his inherent low self-esteem, without any thought for past reality.” It doesn’t take a psychiatrist to notice that our president is mentally compromised, with his furious tirades, conspiracy fantasies, and aversion to facts and attraction to violence.

<extract>    Read More Offie Wortham >>>

WRITE ON !

In Light of Pee

Nicola Metcalf

As a Quaker, we talk a lot about seeking “the light”, usually from within.  That can be within oneself or another person. When I went to India, my noticed my perception of light changing.  What I became aware of (in addition to dark poverty, dirt and garbage) was the light without.  When landing in Dubai en route to Chennai (not India but getting close) the lights sparkled with more brilliance than other airports I have visited.  I sat in the Matrimandir Temple in Auroville with its single beam of sunlight penetrating the space as a reminder to concentrate.   Warm inviting sunshine embraced me while swimming in the Bay of Bengal.  I delighted in the eye catching colors of saried women riding scooters sidesaddle.   We ogled necklaces layered thick in glittering gold in an upscale jewelry store.  The indian love of bright reflective things was in the atmosphere all around me.  One day stands out in this experience in particular.

It had been a long day of sightseeing in Tiravunamalai, southern India.  We had risen at 4:30 am to circumambulate 8 miles around the base of Aranuchala Mountain, visiting 8 small temples along the way.

Read More Nicola Metcalf >>>

GUEST ARTCLE

LETTERS FROM CUBA #15

Some sentences from Cuba

Mac Gander

It is dawn in La Habana and I am listening to Bob Marley’s “Rebel Music” as my wife Shanta sleeps in the next room and I mark the end of our third week here. One week to go. Travel is exhausting. There is no moment in which one does not wish to be awake.

I am thinking of the opening trope in Denis Johnson’s “Fiskadoro,” where he invokes Marley as one of the three great gods still left in the Florida Keys after a nuclear holocaust, a book that ends with a war-ship returning to those shores after a 90-year quarantine, from Cuba, a grey ship that is taller than the sky.

GUEST ARTICLE

LETTERS FROM CUBA #12

What lies beneath: Our stories our ghosts

Shanta Lee Gander

Who came first?  Europa or Europe?  With some research, I could get an answer, but the story of a girl who keeps dreaming about two continents fighting over her and who meets her fate and immortality with a God turned beautiful bull is an old one

SPECIAL FEATURE

A Dance with Hermes

Ken Masters

‘Into this hallowed room (I remember a gratifying visiting Professor of Logic, who, whilst debunking “Eastern Philosophy”, and cutting short his fourteen pages of definitions of “consciousness”, waved his arms in the air, inviting in the energy to energise the very expression of his de-bunking – which intangibility I can not possibly recognise, classify, or exonerate) came one Lindsay Clarke, propagating one irritatingly intangible “(A Dance With) Hermes”, full of vital “presence”, whom I hoped I had seen off aeons ago.

Halley’s Debris

Vermont Views

Debris from Halley’s Comet to spark Orionid meteor shower this weekend, Oct 19 to 21ß

Cloud-free conditions will allow much of the United States to see this weekend’s Orionid meteor shower, the first major shower of the fall.

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