*Jethro Bodine referred to his cyphering abilities with multiplication and "go-zin-ta's as in "five gozinta five one times, five gozinta ten two times" etc. Our friend here is engaging in far more sophisticated mathematics than Mr. Heapin' Helpin'.
He
was sitting on the couch with his grey cat. "Good grief, your hair is
everywhere" he complained, seeing grey filaments all over his sweat
clothes. "That's because I own you, bitch" the cat replied.
He
miraculously survived the war and was stationed back in the States in
San Francisco. She took a train from Michigan to be with him never
having been more than 50 miles from home. Her elder sisters generally
did not approve.
"I couldn't pick this kid outta a police lineup" lamented the professor in the final days of the term. "He so rarely came to class and never to conferences."
While she had no regrets moving to her new home, every Spring she experienced a twinge of disappointment. For 25 years living in Paris, the lily of the valley bloomed in time for May Day. But now, having moved to a place in a more northern latitude, they bloom several weeks later.
I came across this term in an article in the New Yorker. I had never heard it before.
From Audubon CA site: Groups of vultures spiraling upward to gain altitude
are called "kettles". As vultures catch thermal updrafts they take on
the appearance of water boiling in a pot – hence the name kettle.
EzumeImages
We lost during a windstorm earlier this month, the birch limb that held our bird feeder. I bought a tall shepherd's crook and awaited the squirrel onslaught. Within days, they had shimmied up the pole and were feasting. The squirrel baffle I ordered should arrive today or so.
The first to access the feeder was a red squirrel named by C as Squirrel Nutkin in honor of the beloved Beatrix Potter character.
A young male that we named Puck soon came along and this acrobat/trickster/thief was all over the feeder.
In the absence of the tree rodents, many of our feathered pals enjoyed a snack. Here, Messrs. Goldfinch and House Finch stopped by.
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| Steve Ryan |
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| Pictured: Blackberry mango margarita |
Best served very cold, neat.
Indian phase
1. Turmeric kombucha with muddled blackberries.
Cooling tropical phase
2. Ginger colada with muddled pineapple
Her father took her hunting only once. The hunt ceased when she asked her father if he could put the rabbit's head back on it's body.
The contempt for her by her colleague was immense. The woman waited to e-mail her wedding RSVP until 48 minutes before the ceremony was to begin.
They won’t eat lettuce!! Her childhood myths were shattered as the lettuce and carrots she left on the lawn were ignored by the wild bunnies.
All of us have a mortality clock inside us that imperceptibly pulses. After the cancer diagnosis, the sound began to intrude upon his consciousness.
Editor's note: all stories are factual.
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| Mr. Red Bird feeding his mate out back. Aww, good lad! |
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| From The Guardian, photography took portrait of a squirrel who came up on his bench, stole a brownie out of his pack and proceeded to enjoyed it in front of him. Cheeky! |
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| Our Rolla on a very wet day. |
After she left her husband, she stayed at her sister's while they were on vacation. She fasted and found particular refuge sitting and staring at one of their roses bushes in a sunny section in the backyard. She saw visions and heard voices as she focused upon the rose's thorns and HIS suffering merged with her own as she processed years of abuse.
One never knew how the night would go at the restaurant when the chef turned up high.
The wind was feeling needy so he blew and blew in order to get attention.
They had taken magic mushrooms while in college. Roberto remarked to a mutual friend: "it was really windy out yesterday. Raoul must have been going crazy."
Editor's note: items one and four are factual.
About 3 years ago, Mr Maple had a severe vertical split on his main trunk. In an attempt to save him, I began to wrap the wound with weed block fabric to help keep out insects and try to hold him together. Each Spring, I would change the wrap. This year, to my great surprise, pleasure and relief, I discovered he had sealed his wound. For an explanation of how trees treat wounds, here is an extract from a Northern Woodlands Magazine article by Michael Snyder:
In order to survive, trees must overcome their injuries. But technically they don’t heal their wounds, at least not the way that human and animal bodies repair, restore, or replace damaged cells or tissue. Trees are built in layers of cells that are bound by rigid walls in a modular, compartmented way. This structure dictates their wound response.
During each annual growth period, trees build their trunks and branches outward from a layer of actively dividing cells. Increments of new wood are added in a cone shape, enveloping the previous year’s smaller, cone-shaped increment. Picture stacked traffic pylons. Thus, trees grow ever upward and outward, in front of themselves, both in length and in girth.
When a cell is damaged, a tree cannot go back and fix or replace it. But it can limit the damage from any given injury by containing it and excommunicating it from the rest of the still-growing tree. The trick is in sealing, not healing. The focus is on resisting the spread of damage – especially infections of bacteria and fungi and the decay they cause – by isolating the wound and then growing beyond it.
Trees close wounds in two separate processes that create both chemical and physical boundaries around the damaged cells. First, they produce what is sometimes called a reaction zone, altering the chemistry of the existing wood surrounding a wound and making it inhospitable to decay organisms. Then, they build a barrier zone to compartmentalize the injured tissue with new tissue called “callus” or “wound wood” growing outward. If all goes according to plan, the callus growth covers and seals the wound and allows new uncontaminated wood to grow over and beyond it.
They were sold out of a little roadside diner owned by Miss Jackson's aunt and was blessed with plenty of parking off a paved road. Miss Jackson grew up a few miles away on a sharecropper's plot and orchard. She learned cooking from her aunt as her mother had passed when she was 8. Her father never was part of her life.
She was a quiet yet easy-going girl and her aunt soon recognized that Miss Jackson had a special talent for making pies. What started as helping out family in their business became a full-time job. Miss Jackson never did anything else. There was a brief marriage, she had fallen for a local fellow and they were deeply in love. But, it did not last. They both wanted children but all attempts ended in miscarriage. After the third one, the doctors told her that she would never produce a child. This news ended the marriage as the most prominent goal of her husband as a man, was to produce offspring, especially a male, to carry on the family name. He loved her but he had to have his needs met and left her. It broke her heart and she never remarried and for the rest of her life she was known as Miss Jackson.
Her pies became famous and she made them for 64 years. Folks of all kinds came from all over to sample a slice. Even the most hardcore racists could not resist. They would slink in, eyes averted in shame, feeling the hard stares that met them, murmuring their order. Miss Jackson never gave them a cross word or look as she took their order at the counter and while her usual smile was present, her eyes betrayed a momentary hardness in recognition of these people who had mistreated hers for generations.
Miss Jackson died at age 84 having spent her life making pies. The pies were her creations, her children, that she lovingly made by hand, nourishing her community by giving them, no matter how hard times were, a few moments of earthly bliss.
She continued making pies in heaven where contrary to uninformed ideas, those denizens could retain corporeal form and enjoy food and drink. It was A and D day, short for Angels and Deities. A large pavilion had been set up and the angels, with their wings politely tucked in, sat at long tables enjoying a slice of pie. All wore sunglasses since ole Yahweh, in his shining brilliance had stopped by for a slice and wandered back to his office. Miss Jackson leaned against a pillar, eating a slice, listening to one of her favorite sounds, the clacking of silverware on plates and the contented sighs. Jesus, with his sunglasses on his forehead, walked up to her after finishing his slice to thank her for her efforts as He was endlessly thoughtful and polite. "Oh baby" Miss Jackson replied, motioning to her face, "you have crumbs on your beard." Jesus laughed, his brown eyes radiant, brushed them away. "Perhaps I was saving them for later" he replied with a wink.
Pawel Kuczynski is a Polish graphic artist whose work is often featured on the cover of wprost (Directly), a Polish language weekly news magazine founded in 1982.
April 9
March 11
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| March 5 "Crown" | |
Northern star, aurora borealis
Paint the night with your ethereal glow
Pure sky, divine radiance
Silent magic, glinting softly
Clarity
Come and encompass me, oh
Clarity
It's springtime in this winter of blueness
The night sky is brightened by your light
Pink and violet emanations
Perfectly clear, rays that heal
It's springtime in this winter of blueness
The night sky is brightened by your light
Pink and violet emanations
Perfectly clear, rays that heal
Clarity
Come and encompass me, oh
Clarity
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| Joana Choumali "The Return of the Swallows" 2021 mixed media |
From her latest exhibition, this Ivory Coast artist journals her grief after her mother passed from COVID. The children here are wearing white, symbolizing mourning in their culture. The swallows, returning in Spring, a sign of new beginnings.
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| Cover of the gold record with playback instructions | |
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| $9.95 |
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| Cat butt magnets-6 pack- $12.99 |
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| Aaron Smith |
When April began to paint the sky?
From "The Blue Jay"
by Susan Hartley Swett
1860-1907
This morning:
Yesterday, C received one of those FB memory things on her feed from a year ago. It was a photo of her next to a magnolia tree in back of Bessey Hall holding a bloom. One year ago at this very time. Damn mother nature person!*
*another translation gem I came across on YouTube.
Meanwhile, over the past weekend:
